BC Platforms will partner with Monash University, Australia’s largest university, to develop and improve methods for storing, retrieving, organising and analysing genomic and clinical data.
BC Platforms will provide Monash with all its core suite of products including BC│Genome for statistical analyses within genomics, BC│Predict for variant interpretation and BC|Safebox to safely share sensitive data between scientists at Monash and its key collaborators around the world.
BC Platforms will also support the ASPREE (ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly) international clinical trial being led by the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash and the Berman Centre for Outcomes and Clinical Research in the USA. The trial is investigating whether daily low-dose aspirin improves quality of life for older people. The randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled study for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression and some cancers is being undertaken in Australia and the USA and has over 19,000 participants. Participant follow-up is conducted longitudinally for an average of five years with extensive phenotypic and clinical data collection. The ASPREE Healthy Ageing Biobank will facilitate genetic and biomarker studies across thousands of biospecimens from the study.
“We are pleased to welcome Monash University as a customer in our global network of leading research units. Monash clearly is among those entities who can drive and impact the whole healthcare industry with their innovative capabilities including the unique ASPREE initiative,” said Nino da Silva, EVP, Sales and Marketing at BC Platforms.
“Our primary goal is to deliver a platform to the University that will provide researchers worldwide with timely and easy to access large-scale data sets in order to bring clinical benefits to patients.”
Dr Paul Lacaze, Head of the Public Health Genomics Program in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash, commented: “We are delighted to partner with BC Platforms and believe that with their support we can now tackle a more ambitious range of epidemiological, clinical and genetic research questions. This will require analysing data sets of increasing size and scale as our research program continues to grow in coming years.”
