LifeMap Sciences, a subsidiary of BioTime, has introduced a database platform of human cellular life to advance research in the stem cell and other biomedical fields, and develop new diagnostic technologies and therapeutic products.
The LifeMap Discovery platform provides data-mining capabilities and bioinformatics applications as well as integrates embryonic development and stem cell biology with molecular, cellular, anatomical, and disease-related information.
In addition to LifeMap Discovery, the company's database platforms for biomedical and stem cell research include GeneCards, the human gene database, and MalaCards, the human disease database.
BioTime president and chief executive officer Michael West said the launch of the LifeMap Discovery database is a significant milestone in the emerging field of regenerative medicine.
"Many of the degenerative diseases afflicting our aging population are caused by a lack of functional cells capable of regenerating particular tissues in the body," West added.
"Until recently, the field has suffered from the lack of a "roadmap" directing scientists through the many hundreds of branch points in the stems of the tree of human cellular life.
"Together with GeneCards? and MalaCards, LifeMap Discovery? provides the beginning of an online directory that may help us see the day when lifesaving stem cell-based therapies reach the people so desperately in need of them."