Thomson Reuters and the Children's Tumor Foundation Collaborate to Find a Cure for Neurofibromatosis through Unique Disease Pathway Maps

Efforts lead to the launch of Neurofibromatosis (NF) MetaMiner

News provided by

Apr 04, 2014, 06:00 ET

PHILADELPHIA, April 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading provider of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced an expansion of its partnership with the Children's Tumor Foundation (CTF) to create unique neurofibromatosis (NF) pathway maps aimed at significantly increasing the understanding of the disease and its underlying mechanisms.

The Children's Tumor Foundation is using Thomson Reuters manually curated content and Life Sciences Professional Services to achieve its mission of finding a cure for neurofibromatosis. It utilizes Thomson Reuters Integrity to scout for new compounds; customized Disease Funding Schema to create a better understanding of how its funding impacts research; and Thomson Reuters MetaCore to support data visualization and enhance the understanding of NF through the development of disease-specific pathways.

The Children's Tumor Foundation has expanded its role as a research partner to academia and industry, alongside its funding focus. Thomson Reuters is helping this effort through the creation of a fully integrated systems biology capability. The collaboration includes the reconstruction and analysis of causal networks underlying NF mechanisms and the development of a comprehensive collection of NF1 & NF2 pathology pathway maps. These will be available to researchers through the CTF website via Thomson Reuters MetaCore, an integrated software suite for functional data analysis.

"Thomson Reuters content and services are essential to our Foundation being viewed as an active research partner with valuable systems biology insights," said Annette Bakker, president of the Children's Tumor Foundation. "Thomson Reuters is a trusted partner with the breadth of content and expertise needed to find new treatments and a cure for neurofibromatosis. The Thomson Reuters solutions we have, and how we apply them, are unique and game changing for our organization."

The Children's Tumor Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the research and more effective treatment of neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that can cause tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body. One in every 3,000 people is afflicted with neurofibromatosis; most suffer from painful, non-cancerous growths that can result in blindness, hearing loss, physical deformities and learning disabilities.

"It is an honor to expand our partnership with the Children's Tumor Foundation in its search for a cure for neurofibromatosis," said Chris McKenna, general manager of discovery science, Thomson Reuters Life Sciences. "The maps we are helping them develop will provide NF researchers with a unique resource to reveal the mechanisms behind the disease and further accelerate the drug discovery process."

Learn more about Thomson Reuters System Biology Solutions and Integrity.

Learn more about the Children's Tumor Foundation and visit the Disease Maps here.

Children's Tumor Foundation
The Children's Tumor Foundation is dedicated to finding effective treatments for the millions of people worldwide living with neurofibromatosis (NF). NF can cause tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body and can lead to blindness, bone abnormalities, cancer, deafness, disfigurement, learning disabilities, and disabling pain. NF affects one in every 3,000 people, more than cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Huntington's disease combined. The Children's Tumor Foundation funds critical research into neurofibromatosis. In addition to benefiting those who live with NF, this research is shedding new light on several forms of cancer, brain tumors, bone abnormalities, and learning disabilities, ultimately benefiting the broader community. For more information, please visit www.ctf.org.

Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

CONTACT

Jen Breen
[email protected]
215-823-1791

Molly Malone
[email protected]
215-823-3702

Simon Vukelj
Children's Tumor Foundation
[email protected]
212-344-7568

SOURCE Thomson Reuters