Analytics Company, Johns Hopkins to Study Asthma Genomes

(Genome.gov)

Knome Inc., a genomics analysis company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it received a contract from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore to provide its software and services for a study of genetic variants that contribute to asthma in African American and African Caribbean populations. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

The study, says the company, involves analysis of 1,000 genomes from participants of African descent from 15 academic research centers across the United States, the Caribbean, South America, and research sites in west Africa. Knome expects its technology will be used to annotate the collected genomes, and transform each genome’s raw sequence information into a data set suitable for comparative interpretation.

Knome’s services include knomeBase, that the company says transforms human genome sequence data into a format optimized for fast interpretation. The company’s literature says the knomeBase service standardizes, annotates, compares, and distills raw sequence data. Knome also provides software applications, libraries, and scripts for further interpretation or testing of the data.

The company also announced the appointment of Martin Tolar as its Chief Executive Officer. Tolar is a former biotechnology executive and professor of neurology at Yale University medical center.

Read more: Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women’s Establish Genomic Database

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