NextBio of Santa Clara, Calif., has unveiled NextBio Clinical, an extension of the company's existing life sciences platform to translational medicine applications such as biomarker discovery and clinical trial optimization.

Adding curated genomic, molecular and clinical profiles from thousands of individual patients to the platform's existing repository of data from animal and cell line models, NextBio Clinical enables the earlier application of clinical information to enhance research and development.

"Since 2004, NextBio has been addressing the research needs of scientists at academic institutions, pharmaceutical and biotech companies with our cross-technology platform for integrative data analysis," sais Saeid Akhtari, president and CEO of NextBio. "Now, with NextBio Clinical, we directly address the challenges of taking genomics into clinical research for the development of therapeutics and companion diagnostics. By providing patient-centric data and analysis, we facilitate biomarker-driven research that can accelerate the process of translational drug discovery."

Akhtari added, "With the growing availability and decreasing cost of obtaining individual patient data moving genomics into clinical applications, NextBio Clinical is a natural extension for both our platform and our clients who have been using NextBio in their research for many years."

Organizations can use the NextBio Clinical platform to accelerate drug discovery by applying human biology earlier in the discovery process, to discover and develop predictive biomarkers, and to optimize clinical trial design and patient selection to reduce development timelines and increase the chance of successful approval for new therapies.

“By enabling our users to bring patient genomic data into the clinical development process at an early stage, we hope to help improve the pace and success rate at which biomarker-based therapeutics are approved for clinical use,” said Kupershmidt.