GeneGo is Awarded NCI Phase II Grant for Development of a Platform for Integrative Data Analysis in Cancer

ST. JOSEPH, Mich., June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- GeneGo, Inc., a leading provider of databases, software and services in systems biology and chemistry, announced today that they were awarded with a Phase II SBIR grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for further development of an analytical platform for translational research and data analysis in oncology. NCI funding will support the industry and academia collaborative project MetaMiner (Oncology) run by GeneGo with investigators at Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, Tgen, Van Andel Institute and several global pharmaceutical companies. The MetaMiner platform combines disease reconstruction of multiple cancers, OMICs data repository and advanced statistical tools based on pathway descriptors.

"We are very pleased with NCI's decision to continue support for our MetaMiner(Oncology) platform,  which is tailored for biologists, bench scientists, clinicians and medicinal chemists working in oncology," said Yuri Nikolsky, CEO of GeneGo and the grant's PI.  "Over the last two years, we have created a general framework for disease reconstruction (causal disease models) and annotated many thousands of 'causative' links between genes, perturbed pathways and seven different cancers. We see target discovery, translational cancer research and personalized diagnostics as the top application areas for MetaMiner (Oncology)."

"There are many 'generic' pathway tools on the market, helpful to some extent in cancer data analysis. However, none of them is centered around cancer biology, which is essential," says Kornelia Polyak, an Associate Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a consultant on the grant. "Another focus is on the development of pathway-based tools for integration of different types of OMICs data – somatic mutations, high copy number genes, epigenetics, gene expression, proteomics and metabolomics."

About GeneGo, Inc.

GeneGo, Inc. develops systems biology technology such as compound based pathway analysis, cheminformatics & bioinformatics software for life science research. The original computational MetaDiscovery™ platform allows an integration and expert analysis of different kinds of experimental data (mRNA expression, proteomics, metabolomics, microRNA assays and other phenotypic data) and relevant bioactive chemistry (metabolites, drugs, other xenobiotics) within the framework of curated biological pathways and networks. GeneGo's flagship product, MetaCore 6.2™, assists pharmaceutical scientists in the areas of target selection and validation, data mining in biology, identification of biomarkers for disease states and toxicology. The second product, MetaDrug 6.2™ is designed for prediction of human metabolism, toxicity and biological effects for novel small molecules compounds. MetaBase™ represents the knowledge base for MetaCore.

For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.genego.com.

SOURCE GeneGo, Inc.