ABL Licensed CRP-Santé COMET Subtyping Tool

LUXEMBOURG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The licensing and distribution agreement allows ABL to directly host COMET (COntext-based Modeling for Expeditious Typing) subtyping tool developed at CRP-Santé within the TherapyEdge servers; it will mainly interact with the ViroScore Suite system to characterize HIV-1 virus subtypes.

“We foresee new developments in viral hepatitis viruses and to apply it to pyrosequencing platforms. We are very pleased to license a technology developed at the Luxembourg Retrovirology Laboratory.”

The COMET subtyping tool (http://comet.retrovirology.lu) is derived from the ppm compression algorithm and specifically adapted to nucleotide sequence scanning. It was presented by Mr Struck at the 8th European HIV Drug resistance workshop held in Sorrento, Italy (17-19 March 2010). He showed that the new CRP-Santé subtyping tool COMET is at least as reliable to predict HIV-1 subtype as existing approaches. The performance and scalability of the method allow it to be applied to high throughput sequence analysis. Thus, it can be applied to other viruses than HIV-1.

"It offers our researchers and customers an additional approach of excellence to adequately characterize HIV-1 and other viruses with the ViroScore Suite system in our continuous efforts towards personalised medicine," said Ronan Boulmé, Vice-President of ABL TherapyEdge Group. “We foresee new developments in viral hepatitis viruses and to apply it to pyrosequencing platforms. We are very pleased to license a technology developed at the Luxembourg Retrovirology Laboratory." CRP-Santé joins a growing number of international algorithms and expert systems licensed in for implementation on TherapyEdge servers.

“With this agreement, we reinforce our commitment that COMET will be used by more researchers across the World, especially the ones in developing countries with limited internet access but where various and complex HIV-1 subtypes are circulating. It will enhance our knowledge to improve COMET for future releases, bring additional partnerships and international exposure to the CRP-Santé technology and expertise," said Philippe De Backer, Technology Transfer Officer at CRP-Santé.

This agreement extends the collaboration between the two entities, as ABL was formed in 2001 as a CRP-Santé spin-off.

About ABL
Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL) S.A. is an information technology company dedicated to develop healthcare products and services to enable its customers deliver high-quality and optimal personalized healthcare by streamlining processes and improving the quality and safety of patient care. Over the last 10 years, ABL has developed its proprietary TherapyEdge Electronic Medical Record System, to manage all conditions, medications, and laboratory tests, with integrated modules to enable personalized disease management using clinical, biological and genetics decision support algorithms for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis and Tuberculosis. The TherapyEdge and ViroScore Suite platforms are fully integrated with hospital information systems (HIS) and laboratory information system (LIS) according industry standards.. TherapyEdge™ and ViroScore™ Suite are covered by international intellectual property portfolio.
www.therapyedge.com

About CRP-Santé
CRP-Santé employs 200 researchers and 50 support staff, working on more than hundred research projects which have resulted in 98 peer-reviewed publications in 2009. Its steadily increasing annual budget is currently around 35 million Euro.
CRP-Santé actively collaborates with multiple international institutions, including with the TGen Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona (www.tgen.org) and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington (www.fhcrc.org).
CRP-Santé is a young research organisation with highly qualified personnel working in multidisciplinary teams with strong integration of laboratory, clinical and public health research. CRP-Santé’s research focus is on health topics with high impact on the European and global population. The research units have state-of-the-art equipment in emerging fields of biomedical research and increasingly develop a market oriented approach aiming at commercial and clinical valorisation.
www.crp-sante.lu