LifeMap Sciences, a subsidiary of BioTime has announced a partnership agreement with Advaita Corporation, which develops and sells iPathwayGuide, an advanced web-based pathway analysis platform capable of identifying mechanisms of action and potential drug targets directly from gene-expression experiments. Under the agreement, iPathwayGuide will be integrated into LifeMap's GeneCards database of human genes, and offered to GeneCards' large user base of life scientists.

"We are excited to introduce iPathwayGuide to our user base and believe that it fits well with our GeneCards Plus tools and our extensive knowledgebase related to genes, pathways, cells and diseases," said Mr Yaron Guan-Golan, chief marketing officer, LifeMap Sciences.

By offering iPathwayGuide, LifeMap is expanding its offering of research tools to provide an advanced and unique tool that is easy to use, easy to interpret, and fits all budgets. In addition to its advanced pathway and gene ontology (GO) analysis, iPathwayGuide also offers the ability to identify putative mechanisms that can explain all observed expression changes, as well as identify the miRNAs that can play an important role in the condition under study.

GeneCards Plus includes GeneAnalytics (http://geneanalytics.genecards.org/) a novel gene set analysis tool, GeneALaCart (http://genealacart.genecards.org), the GeneCards batch querying application and VarElect (http://varelect.genecards.org), the Next Generation Sequencing phenotyper. LifeMap holds the exclusive worldwide license to market GeneCards, MalaCards, GeneAlaCart and VarElect from Yeda Research and Development Company, the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

"We are thrilled by the opportunity to partner with LifeMap Sciences, the provider of GeneCards, one of the most comprehensive databases of gene information. We think that our iPathwayGuide is a strong addition at the end of any analysis pipeline and a natural fit in the LifeMap suite of tools," said Dr Sorin Draghici, president and CEO of Advaita.