Singapore: The intellectual property and science business of Thomson Reuters has collaborated with Japan's Tohoku University and Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (ToMMo) to help restore Tohoku's medical system to its pre-earthquake state and help its medical community further develop its research efforts.

Thomson Reuters is providing the organization with a suite of solutions including its Cortellis for Informatics Gene Variant Database to support the organization's unique, large-scale genetic research study to further personalized medicine.

ToMMo was established in February 2012 to help rebuild Tohoku, after the devastating earthquake in 2011, with a state-of-the-art research platform and a study designed to record the changing health of families over a 10-year period, examining the relationships between genetic traits and lifestyle and the future incidence of certain diseases. The three-generational study is the largest project of its kind designed to understand the causal relationships between disease, environment and genetics.

ToMMo expects that the results of the study will help build higher-quality medical services that are better adapted to a patient's genetic traits (genome information). The large-scale study is helping to rebuild the community by training local healthcare professionals and experts, and by constructing a biobank to store health information, medical records, clinical test data, blood samples and other data.

Thomson Reuters is supporting ToMMo's study and biobank by providing an array of its research solutions, including its Gene Variant Database, which offers gene variant information related to diseases and treatment responsiveness, efficacy and toxicity, as well as information on the drugs used in treatment. This will effectively support the project's risk analysis and drug efficacy screening by genotype, and will contribute to the organization's overall aim in realizing personalized medicine and disease prevention.

"We are delighted to be working with Thomson Reuters," said Professor Yamamoto, executive director of ToMMo. "The data within the Thomson Reuters Gene Variant Database is critical in supporting our efforts to study a family's genetic profile in order to advance personalized medicine and disease prevention."

Cortellis for Informatics is a series of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that access data from Thomson Reuters Cortellis, the premier source of Life Science information, to be integrated into an organization's internal systems. The Gene Variant Database within the platform is the industry's leading gene variant index, with data from journals, scientific papers, proceedings, patents, clinical trial registrations to clinical guidelines and FDA approval documents. It is manually curated by Life Science experts and also includes pathway and clinical trial information.

"We are honored to be collaborating with ToMMo on this critical project that will not only help rebuild Tohoku, but it will also advance the path of personalized medicine," said Mr Joseph Donahue, senior vice president, Thomson Reuters Life Sciences. "Our Gene Variant Database will help identify key relationships between an individual's genetic composition and lifestyle, to help assess their risk factors for specific diseases and conditions."