Sequence Services
Ten proposals were received in response to the Phase 2 RFP. Three proposals demonstrated deep knowledge and experience in bioinformatics, strong customer focus and alignment to the RFP, ability and experience in providing extensible cloud services, and innovative approaches to the problems presented in the RFP. In December, the five participating pharma companies in the sequence services working group (GSK, BMS, AZ, Lundbeck, and Roche) signed shared-risk funding agreements to develop the proposals submitted by
- Constellation/GeneStack
- Eagle Genomics/Cycle Computing
- Hewlett-Packard Company
We look forward to seeing the outputs from these companies at the Pistoia Alliance Conference and Members' Meeting in April.
Read more about the winning proposals »
Sequence Squeeze
Two entries are making a bid for the US$15,000 prize for developing the best new algorithm for compressing next-generation sequencing data. Check out the leaderboard on the Sequence Squeeze website to see where things stand so far.
In our last newsletter, we mentioned that there were four judges for this competition. And while we correctly identified the fourth judge's affiliation (the Broad Institute), we named the wrong individual. Tim Fennel, assistant director for sequencing pipeline informatics at the Broad, will serve as the fourth judge on a panel that also includes representatives from BGI, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and Pistoia.
Learn more about Sequence Squeeze »
SESL
Ian Harrow gave a well-received talk at Bio-ITWorld European Conference and Expo in October that raised the possibility of transferring the learnings from the SESLpilot to the IMI Open PHACTS project. Two papers further detailing the results of the SESL effort are being developed for publication.
View Ian Harrow's Bio-ITWorld presentation »
Access SESL public demonstrator »
Read more about SESL »
Vocabulary Services
A paper by the vocabulary services team titled "Empowering Industrial Research with Shared Biomedical Vocabularies" was recently published in Drug Discovery Today. This paper lays out the need for shared vocabulary services and posits a way forward. But for the Pistoia Alliance to sponsor some projects, we need support and funding.
Learn more about VSI »
Download the Drug Discovery Today paper »
Email the Executive Director to get involved in VSI »
vocal group of 38 Pistoia Alliance members and non-members met in Hannover, Germany on 10 October 2011 to discuss the "information ecosystem" in biomedical and pharmaceutical research. The objective was to define some tangible projects that would contribute to the ecosystem and that could be undertaken by the Pistoia Alliance. Themes included defining and publishing common use cases; harmonizing processes to facilitate collaboration between life science companies and CROs; and identifying, signposting, and perhaps "certifying" standards within the industry. The group continues to participate in regular teleconferences and has built a portfolio of topics that may be launched as official Pistoia working groups. Anyone is welcome to join ongoing discussions. 
everything Nick has done to build the Alliance's portfolio and credibility in our industry," said Michael. "He's left me some big shoes to fill, but I'm committed to driving the Alliance's portfolio, particularly in the increasingly complex areas of biomedical and biopharmaceutical informatics."