Licensing Agreement Offers Customers Integrated Software Package 

Agilent Technologies Inc and SRI International have announced they have signed a licensing agreement to offer laboratory research customers a package that combines Agilent’s latest release of GeneSpring GX, GeneSpring NGS, Mass Profiler Professional and Pathway Architect version 12.5 with SRI International’s complete BioCyc Pathway Database Collection.

The integrated package will allow scientists to access, combine, visualise and analyse biological data sets across multiple ‘omics’ experiments (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics).

The new software package will enable researchers to display biological pathway data generated by Agilent’s suite of instruments, software and reagents. Agilent solutions include microarrays and next-generation sequencing technology, as well as LC/MS, GC/MS, ICP/MS and NMR systems.

SRI’s BioCyc is a collection of 2,038 Pathway/Genome Databases including 497 complete bacterial genomes from the Human Genome Microbiome Project. Each of the databases in the collection describes the genome and metabolic pathways of a single organism. SRI continues to expand the BioCyc collection with new types of data, curation, genomes and associated pathway predictions.

“Researchers are excited about the extraordinary capabilities they will have with this pathway-driven technology,” said Steven Fischer, Agilent’s Marketing Manager for metabolomics and proteomics. “Some of them, for example, may be doing genomics experiments and then realise that their next step should really be a metabolomics experiment. Either way, Agilent’s comprehensive suite of integrated technologies provides the hardware, software and consumables required to complete multiple cycles of experiments in multiple disciplines. As each experiment informs the next, they can quickly redesign, collect, measure and analyse new sets of data at a much faster rate than ever before.”

Agilent’s combined hardware/software and informatics solutions are fuelling the next generation of pathway-centric multi-omics research and yielding valuable information about drug responses, drug resistance, diagnostic markers and fundamental disease/toxicity pathways.