Grant Awarded for Breast Cancer Biomarker Validation

A provider of software and databases for systems biology and pathway analysis, GeneGo, Inc. (St. Joseph, MI, USA), has announced that the company has been awarded a phase II small business innovation research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD, USA) for the discovery of new biomarkers implicated in breast cancer, based on network analysis.

Dr. Tatiana Nikolskaya, chief scientific officer and president of GeneGo said, "In phase I, we made some exciting new findings in sub-categorization of breast cancers based on network analysis of previously published microarray expression data. However, the biomarkers found in such "meta-analysis” have to be validated in a new design study in a stringent clinical environment.” The program includes a novel large-scale gene-expression and genotyping study to be run at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA) with data analysis in MetaCore, GeneGo's flagship data mining platform.

GeneGo develops systems biology technology for life science research. The original computational platform allows an integration and expert analysis of different kinds of experimental data (messenger RNA expression, proteomics, metabolomics, small interfering RNA, and other phenotypic data) and relevant bioactive chemistry (metabolites, drugs, other xenobiotics) within the framework of curated biologic pathways and networks.

GeneGo's MetaCore 4.0 platform assists scientists in the areas of target selection and validation, identification of biomarkers for disease states, and toxicology. Another product, MetaDrug, is designed for prediction of human metabolism, toxicity, and biologic effects for novel small molecule compounds. MetaBase represents the knowledge base for MetaCore.



Related Links:
GeneGo
U.S. National Cancer Institute