It was today announced that POST Luxembourg has taken a 35% acquisition of shares in Information Technology for Translational Medicine (ITTM), a company founded by scientists of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg.
Through its subsidiary POST Capital, POST Luxembourg recently signed contracts acquiring shares in ITTM S.A., which specialises in the preparation and analysis of data from clinical trials. The agreement was signed by ITTM Managing Director, Dr. Andreas Kremer, and POST Luxembourg Deputy Managing Director, Joseph Glod.
"We are pleased to have POST, as one of the most important technological groups of Luxembourg, become involved in ITTM," commented Dr. Reinhard Schneider, head of the Bioinformatics Core Facility at the LCSB, leading founder of ITTM and chairman of the ITTM Supervisory Board. "It means we can ensure that ITTM will always be using the latest hardware and security technologies when transferring and storing biomedical data".
The extensive experience of Reinhard Schneider and his team in handling large sets of scientifc data has been a major factor in the creation of ITTM, with their expertise involving configuring biological experiments to ensure they yield analysable data, preparing and standardising storage of this information in databases, and developing new bioinformatics tools for their analysis.
"Our expertise in this field is not only sought by scientists in academic establishments such as the LCSB," continued Schneider. "Researching pharmaceutical companies, too, have gigantic volumes of data in their laboratories, holding many more scientific insights in store. If analysed using the latest bioinformatics approaches, they could lead to new diagnostic or therapeutic approaches, even if they appear to be already exhausted".
This potential has also been recognised at the EU level, with the LCSB having been heavily involved in the eTRIKS (European Translational Information and Knowledge Management System) consortium research project, during which academic establishments and pharmaceutical companies developed common standards, methods and technologies by which varied data could be reanalysed from different perspectives.
"We were responsible for preparing data here - data curation, as we say," added Schneider on the need for attention to detail. "You can imagine it as if a dump truck has dumped tons of data in the yard. And then, you have to organise, standardise, properly label and then store these data in databases [...] through this process, we have learned a lot about how to apply standardised criteria and procedures for clinical trials, and what bioinformatics should look like for efficient analysis".
ITTM Managing Director Andreas Kremer explained how "This know-how is the basis of ITTM's business. We have many interested parties from the pharmaceutical industry who want us to re-prepare and analyse their data. We have already concluded the first contracts and even successfully completed a number of orders".
POST Luxembourg, for its part, operates data centres in Luxembourg whilst adhering to strict quality standards and ensuring the concerns of pharmaceutical companies, namely that their information is secure against third parties and is available in the distant future, are met.
"Here, we will always find the latest hardware for our clients' data and a security architecture that is internationally unrivalled," added Kremer.
"Because these data place the highest demands on IT, we have to be at the peak of technology at all times," concluded Joseph Glod. "The rapid development of biomedicine is a driver that helps us develop the standards and to remain a global leader in the implementation. ITTM offers us long-term development opportunities - which is why we have gladly become involved in this very promising start-up".
