Peter Wills Bioinformatic Centre (PWBC)

The Peter Wills Bioinformatic Centre forms the cornerstone of a new vision for Garvan’s research into novel and highly effective ways to prevent and treat such disorders as cancer, arthritis, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, pituitary disease and mental illness.

It was established at Garvan in 2001 and became fully operational early in 2002 with the hiring of Bioinformatics Specialist, Dr Warren Kaplan and Bioinformatics Analyst, Dr Gerard Hammond. Jim McBride was appointed Director of the Centre in late 2002.

The Centre initiated several projects during 2002 that added significant value to the science at Garvan. These included:

• Upgrading of the cancer histology image and pathology management system CanSto to include clinical outcome details for patients with prostate cancer. The system now allows Cancer researchers to look at the association of gene activity in tumour tissue and relate it directly to the patient’s clinical outcome

• Stage I of a new project Vincent - a system for the management of bi-polar disorder clinical and genetic information - providing users with a web-based interface for the collection of mood disorder clinical interview information for storage and management within Garvan’s information architecture. The system allows the clinical researchers to test new diagnostic algorithms against the huge volume of clinical details captured from mood disorder clinics at Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, NSW and University of Tasmania

• A collaboration with the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute to obtain the base code for sequence searching. This code was selected and tailored for a particular DNA sequence search required by the Bone and Mineral Research Program.

Media Release

Prime Minister's Press Release