SRA International receives award of task order to continue support for TCGA

SRA International, Inc. (NYSE: SRX), a leading provider of technology and strategic consulting services and solutions to government organizations and commercial clients, today announced the award of a task order as a contractor to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue bioinformatics support of the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The new award to SRA has a potential total dollar value of $17.9 million over five years, if all options are exercised.

“By leveraging our scientific and bioinformatics expertise, information technology, and innovation, SRA is proud to support the expansion of this historic, groundbreaking program.”

A joint project of the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute, TCGA is one of the largest collaborative efforts ever attempted for the molecular characterization of tumors to improve our ability to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer.

SRA has supported TCGA since its inception as a pilot in 2006. Based on the remarkable sets of multidimensional data generated by the pilot, TCGA has expanded from a pilot on two cancers to a full program to study more than 20 types of cancer. The first 18 months of this task order are funded under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, to help stimulate the economy through support of biomedical research.

"TCGA is among the most important projects at NIH," said SRA Health Programs Vice President Paul Nedzbala. "By leveraging our scientific and bioinformatics expertise, information technology, and innovation, SRA is proud to support the expansion of this historic, groundbreaking program."

In addition to continued and expanded support of the DCC and the TCGA data portal, under the new award SRA will develop a Data Algorithm Repository, as well as provide direct bioinformatics support to the TCGA Program Office. As the DCC, SRA is responsible for collecting, transforming, disseminating, and conducting quality assurance on all of the research study data generated by more than 60 organizations that make up the TCGA network of laboratories, universities, cancer centers, and private companies, which all collaborate on the TCGA program. The DCC efforts since the launch of the TCGA program in 2006 have included developing and supporting software that controls data submission, reviewing the data for quality control, and development of an online data portal to share the data with research and medical communities and the entire cancer community. SRA has also contributed to the writing of several scientific papers characterizing brain and ovarian tumors.