BioImagene (Cupertino, California), a provider of image informatics solutions for life science research, drug discovery and development and digital pathology, reported a collaboration with HP (Palo Alto, California) to bundle its high-content analysis and digital pathology platforms with HP servers.

In the life sciences, drug discovery and healthcare industries, extracting information and knowledge from image data is still manual, inefficient and expensive, the company said. As two-thirds of the data is in the form of images, efficient management of image data is a mission-critical component for successful decision making.

The integration of BioImagene and HP technologies is expected to allow for better management of the “huge” amounts of image/data generated in discovery, life sciences, and clinical laboratories, BioImagene said.

“HP is a trusted name in enterprise servers, and [BioImagene] is the leader in image management, and processing and analysis for both high content analysis and digital pathology,” Mat Rashidi, PhD, interim VP of marketing and business development for BioImagene, told Diagnostics & Imaging Week. “These are two huge markets, and basically this announcement is just the beginning of a broad . . . collaboration.”

BioImagene products include CellMine, TissueMine and 3i. Bundling of BioImagene technologies with HP servers will be designed to offer users a cost-effective solution for rapid image analysis, image processing, and image management on a proven platform for life sciences, drug discovery, and digital pathology work.

BioImagene has developed a product line from the flagship management platform 3i, built on a web-enabled platform. BioImagene’s products are designed to deliver a searchable image database while maintaining processing and analysis algorithms. BioImagene products currently are for research use only; however, Rashidi said the company is seeking FDA clearance for certain of its software.

In other agreements news:

• Affymetrix (Santa Clara, California) reported that it has granted Tessarae (McLean, Virginia) non-exclusive access to its microarray technology to develop and market epidemiological research tests for public health and biodefense surveillance.

As part of the Powered by Affymetrix program, the TessArray kits simultaneously detect and identify hundreds of strains of natural and emergent viral and bacterial pathogens, as well as biothreat agents, the company said. The resulting information is expected to enable researchers to better understand and respond to pandemic infectious disease threats.

The TessArray kits are based on multiplexed genotypic signatures present on the Affymetrix CustomSeq Resequencing Arrays.

Those arrays have been designed and fabricated to detect a set of upper respiratory pathogen-specific target sequences provided by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Public health officials can use the resulting information to quickly identify the most likely agent strain(s) associated with disease outbreaks, the company said.

“The new Affymetrix microarray-based TessArray kits represent common viral and bacterial pathogens associated with acute respiratory disease and pneumonia, as well as biothreat agents that can elicit similar respiratory symptoms,” said Clark Tibbetts, PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer at Tessarae. “For example, the TessArray RPM-Flu Kit detects and distinguishes avian H5N1 from other influenza strains and respiratory pathogens, and simultaneously identifies any known or previously unknown mutations that may elevate strain virulence and pandemic risk.”

The Powered by Affymetrix program enables commercial entities to license GeneChip technology to develop microarray products for applications in diagnostics, forensics, animal testing, industrial testing and food testing.

Tessarae offers a solution for simultaneous detection and identification of known and unknown strains and variants of pathogenic agents.