GigaGen Wins Grant for Cloud-Based Bioinformatics System

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – GigaGen is pleased to announce that it has won a >$1MM Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The Specific Aim of this Phase II SBIR grant application is to launch ClonAlysis^TM, a website and cloud-based platform for the processing, storage, analysis, comparison, and visualization of immune signature data sets generated by deep sequencing of immune repertoires.

In humans, the diverse T and B cell repertoires are the foundation of the adaptive immune response to disease. Several independent groups are performing immune repertoire sequencing, a method of profiling T or B cell repertoires by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Even though this method has many potential applications in cancer immunotherapy, autoimmune disease, monoclonal antibody development, and other areas, the size and complexity of NGS data sets are a bottleneck to data analysis and interpretation in general. This problem is acute in the field of immunology, which has not historically worked with such data sets and thus lacks needed resources and expertise.