Thomson Reuters Collaborates with Orion Bionetworks to Advance the Understanding of Multiple Sclerosis

Alliance to develop predictive disease models will advance and speed the development of new MS treatments

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Oct 22, 2013, 08:30 ET

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading provider of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced a collaboration with Orion Bionetworks to further the understanding of multiple sclerosis (MS) and advance the development of new therapies by generating predictive models of patient stratification and drug targets.

Orion Bionetworks is an alliance of leading organizations in patient care, computational modeling, translational research, and patient advocacy dedicated to transforming the study of brain disorders and accelerating the discovery of new therapies and the search for cures. In this project focused on advancing the understanding of the underlying biology of MS, the members of the alliance will combine their expertise and assets including biomarkers, disease system biology, high performance computing information technology and big data analytics to integrate and interpret clinical, molecular, imaging and real-world patient data to develop new predictive models for the disease.

"We are pleased to welcome Thomson Reuters, which brings unique modeling capabilities that will help advance our shared goal of accelerating the search for cures for MS," said Magali Haas, founder and chief executive officer of Orion Bionetworks. "This collaboration further underscores the importance of building a robust computational modeling community with diverse expertise and assets to help realize the promise of predictive modeling in disease research."

Thomson Reuters Life Sciences Professional Services researchers use MetaBase, the company's flagship, manually curated database of protein interactions, biological pathways, disease biomarkers and medicinal chemistry, along with its unique collection of MS specific pathway maps and biomarkers, to construct predictive models that identify molecular subtypes, biomarkers, associated mechanisms and novel drug targets.

Thomson Reuters will provide Orion Bionetworks with the results of the modeling through access to the new MetaBase MS pathways and networks via the Thomson Reuters MetaCore platform, an integrated software suite for functional data analysis. The models will also be made available to the Alliance through tranSMART, an open source data sharing and analytics platform.

"We are pleased to be collaborating with Orion Bionetworks on this initiative and providing both our research expertise and the most authoritative content on biological pathways and molecular interactions," said Joe Donahue, senior vice president, Thomson Reuters Life Sciences. "Their cooperative research model brings together academic groups, non-profit institutions and commercial companies to focus on specific diseases, with the promise of developing new therapies faster."

Thomson Reuters Life Sciences Professional Services is a multi-disciplinary team of molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, medicinal chemists and data scientists. Learn more about Thomson Reuters Life Sciences Professional Services.

Orion Bionetworks
Orion Bionetworks is a multi-institution cooperative non-profit alliance that is unlocking the power of shared data and predictive modeling to help transform our understanding of diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and accelerate the search for cures. Alliance partners include leading organizations in patient care, computational modeling, translational research, and patient advocacy: Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis, the Institute for Neurosciences at Brigham and Women's Hospital, GNS Healthcare, MetaCell, PatientsLikeMe, Rancho Biosciences, and Thomson Reuters. For more information, go to www.orionbionetworks.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. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minn., Thomson Reuters employs approximately 60,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

SOURCE Thomson Reuters