Rodin Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotechnology company that develops therapeutics for neurological disorders has announced that it uses Qlucore Omics Explorer to characterise its compounds response to treatment.
Rodin’s approach is to improve neuronal synaptic resilience via the selective inhibition of histone de-acetylase (HDAC) complexes. Evidence supports that the modulation of selective gene regulatory processes can restore synaptic plasticity and cognitive function deficits present in degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease dementia.
‘With Qlucore I instantly see how my data responds to changes in statistical parameters and cutoffs, and have a choice of the best methods for high dimensional data. I can use both supervised and unsupervised methods as 3D PCA, heatmaps, and clustering. Hypotheses testing is significantly helped by this constant feedback, as I can set up analysis, view results, and modify settings with a few clicks,’ comments Dr Berkley Lynch, Senior Director of CNS Research at Rodin.
Degenerative brain disorders affect more than 45 million people worldwide. These diseases often strike older adults and are characterised by progressive deterioration of nerve cells, eventually leading to cell death. Through human and animal studies researchers are developing new diagnosis and treatment of these disorders, with the goal of slowing or stopping their progression. Finding the cause of each degenerative disorder is important in identifying treatments.
Scientists at Rodin study changes in gene expression in brain regions of wild-type and Alzheimer’s transgenic animals after treatment with Rodin compounds. Treatment up-regulates the expression of selected genes associated with learning and memory; QOE was chosen to analyse NanoString and other Omics data used to characterise the response to treatment.
Studying epigenetic changes is a challenging area of drug discovery and development, and has high requirements for data analysis tools in terms of accuracy, flexibility and interactivity. Powerful visualisation and interactive tools for hypotheses generation and testing are valuable for Omics research. Omics experimental methods are becoming critical in many areas of drug discovery, to allow the development of next generation, innovative therapeutics.
Qlucore Omics Explorer is the new generation’s bioinformatics software with focus on ease of use, speed and interactivity. The simplicity of this interaction makes it possible for researchers to work with powerful and statistical analysis in entirely new ways. Not only that, but faster analysis also means that scientists often have more time to test more creative theories, which in turn leads to better research results
‘We are delighted that Rodin has chosen to use Qlucore Omics Expolorer in the important research they are conducting,’ commented Carl-Johan Ivarsson, President of Qlucore. ‘The US is an important and fast-growing market for Qlucore.’