TRADE NEWS: Agilent Technologies Introduces Next-Generation Bioinformatics Software Providing Systems-Level Microarray Analysis

Agilent Technologies Inc., (NYSE:A) today introduced Agilent GeneSpring GX 10.0, the next generation of Agilent’s flagship gene expression bioinformatics platform. GeneSpring GX, considered the Gold standard of desktop gene expression analysis, now offers tools for systems-level data interpretation and pathway analysis, enabling scientists to attain a new level of insight into the underlying mechanism of disease or biological process.

"We developed this new revision of GeneSpring GX to address the growth of systems-level studies in functional genomics research,” said Bruce von Herrmann, Agilent vice president and general manager, Software and Informatics Division. "GeneSpring has always been excellent at gene expression data analysis. Now, it has evolved into an integrated software package that helps scientists discover the relationship between the data and the biological events occurring in their samples.”

Beyond Gene Expression

GeneSpring GX has earned a solid reputation among gene-expression biologists, with more than 4,400 references in Google Scholar, including more than 1,600 in peer-reviewed publications. As systems-level studies become more prevalent in genomics research, GeneSpring GX 10.0 adds visualization and analysis tools for applications including alternative splicing, miRNA expression and real-time PCR. To get more insight into the underlying mechanism of disease, GeneSpring now has powerful pathway analysis capabilities. By providing a database of gene product interactions, scientists can build biological interaction networks from their genes of interest.

GeneSpring also provides statistical tools to detect significant changes in miRNA abundance, and integrates TargetScan miRNA gene-target information to determine the biological consequences of detected changes. Additionally, to facilitate validation of microarray experiments, GeneSpring GX 10.0 supports analysis of real-time PCR data.

Enterprise Solution for Systems-Level Research

To support enterprise functional genomics data-analysis needs, Agilent offers GeneSpring Workgroup, a client-server application with GeneSpring GX as the data-analysis engine providing central and secure storage for GeneSpring data and analysis results.

"Genespring Workgroup has the flexibility to act as an enterprise ‘omics’ data warehouse while also allowing developers to build additional functionality using the extensive APIs,” said Ketan Patel, Ph.D., associate research fellow, Computational Sciences, Pfizer Inc., an early-access user of GeneSpring GX 10.0. "This is the main reason why we favored this product, as it allows us to integrate the system with our existing databases and tools and also build out new functionality using scripting in languages such as R, Java and Python. The APIs allow us to extensively search the database using sample annotation attributes. This was very important to us and will enable broader use of omics data within the enterprise.”

The latest version of GeneSpring GX arises from the collaboration established in August 2007 between Agilent and Strand Life Sciences of Bangalore, India. Strand is a leading life science informatics company and has built GeneSpring on its award-winning avadis platform.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world’s premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company’s 20,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenues of $5.4 billion in fiscal 2007. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.

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