BIOBASE Launches PharmacoGenomic Mutation Database (PGMD™) – a Knowledge-base Containing Genetic Variants that Affect Drug Response

BEVERLY, Mass.

BIOBASE Corporation, the leading provider of expert-curated biological databases, software and services for life science researchers, today announced the release of PGMD™ at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting in Boston, MA. PGMD is a database of detailed genotype-phenotype relationships derived from in vivo pharmacogenomic patient studies, stemming mostly from clinical trials, with insights pertaining to response rate, risk of adverse events, realization of expected outcomes (e.g. patient survival), pharmacokinetic parameters such as dose requirements, and much more.

By aggregating the wealth of knowledge that has been gained from individual studies into one resource that has been optimized for genomic analysis, patients are likely to see tremendous breakthroughs in personalized medicine as researchers begin leveraging this new resource of pharmacogenomic knowledge.

“HGMD^® is already recognized internationally as a resource for genetics researchers interested in identifying the causal variant behind inherited diseases. Now, we’ve put out PGMD™ to compliment HGMD^®, by giving scientists and clinicians actionable insights into what variants are likely to influence drug response,” said Adem Albayrak, Product Manager of PGMD™.

Dr. Gerry Higgins, VP of Pharmacogenomic Science at Assurex Health, a personalized medicine company that specializes in pharmacogenomics for neuropsychiatric and other disorders, subscribed early on to BIOBASE’s new offering. “The PGMD product from BIOBASE is the first user-friendly application that provides a great resource for pharmacogenomic decision-making based on coding SNPs, without resorting to tedious manual extraction of data from the literature,” said Higgins.

The timing of a comprehensive pharmacogenomic resource for the market is aligned well with the recent push from the FDA urging pharmaceutical companies to begin performing due diligence early on in their clinical trials for pharmacogenomic markers.

About BIOBASE

BIOBASE is a leading provider of manually-curated databases including HGMD and Genome Trax for molecular diagnostics. BIOBASE databases offer well-structured data, assembled by qualified experts, organized in an easily searchable manner that enables researchers to make clinical interpretations of data arising from next-generation sequencing efforts. For more information visit: www.biobase-international.com.