ACADEMIA

GeneGo, Inc., a leading provider of software and databases for systems biology, today announced that Merck & Co., Inc. has extended its global enterprise agreement for two additional years. Merck researchers around the world will continue to use the MetaCore data mining suite in research and development activities. The researchers will also retain direct access to MetaBase, a comprehensive database of mammalian protein interactions, signaling and metabolic pathways, bioactive compounds, and diseases manually curated by GeneGo from full text experimental literature. MetaCore and MetaBase have been integrated with Merck's discovery informatics platform and are leveraged across multiple therapeutic areas. "Merck has been a great partner, and we have enjoyed interacting with their scientists. As a result of this collaboration, we have developed a number of new data analysis and visualization features now available in MetaCore. We will continue to encourage this high level of communication as we move forward in 2006," said Julie Bryant, VP business development. "The field of functional data analysis is maturing rapidly, and it is crucial for us to work closely with state-of-art research teams, such as those at Merck."