tranSMART Foundation Announces Version 16.2 - A Collaborative Effort of the tranSMART Community

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and WAKEFIELD, MA--(Marketwired - Feb 21, 2017) - (Molecular Med Tri-Conference, booth #423) The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization providing a global, open-source, open-data knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, today announced the newest release of its tranSMART platform, version 16.2. This version includes significant contributions from numerous members of the tranSMART community and provides users with more advanced functionality to enhance their translational research studies.

The newly developed features in version 16.2 include the SmartR plugin (ITTM/University of Luxembourg/eTRIKS), genomics-based cohort selection (Janssen), GWAS enhancements (Pfizer), GWAS PLINK integration (Clarivate Analytics), XNAT image database integration (Imperial College London and Erasmus Medical Center), and ETL enhancements (Imperial College London/eTRIKS).

"As an open-source platform, tranSMART wouldn't be possible without the contributions of our community," said Keith Elliston, Ph.D., CEO of The tranSMART Foundation. "We are delighted that so many organizations have stepped up to the plate to support further development of the platform. It is a true testament to what open-source communities can offer and the value of collaboration among individuals and organizations in the scientific and technical communities."

The expanding capabilities of the tranSMART platform provide the translational research community with an improved set of tools. For example, SmartR plugin offers the ability to tap into the richness of R to provide workflows for Boxplot, correlation, heat map line graph, and volcano plots. Others will be added in upcoming releases. In addition, there is a workflow that provides a link to the Qiagen Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. Another example is the Janssen contributed genomics cohort selection, HiDome, which supports the use of gene expression and other high dimensional data in the Comparison and Summary Statistics tabs to build cohorts.

Each of these contributions has followed tranSMART's contributor process and guidelines, producing a product that has been subjected to automated testing all along the process. The 16.2 release exemplifies the Foundation's ability to bring new innovations to the platform from a variety of community contributors, while maintaining the quality and reliability of the platform through its release process.

About The tranSMART Foundation
The tranSMART Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides an open-source, cloud-based, data-sharing and analysis platform that enables scientists at universities, disease foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies around the world to share pre-competitive data in a way that saves money and time in translating research findings into new therapies and diagnostic tools. Founded to steward the tranSMART platform, the Foundation is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts with Centers of Excellence in Ann Arbor, Mich.; London, England; Boston, Mass.; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The tranSMART Foundation can also be found on the web at www.tranSMARTFoundation.org.