ACADEMIA

GeneGo, Inc., a leading provider of software and databases for systems biology, announced that UCSD has expanded licenses of MetaCore, GeneGo's platform for mining and visualization of high-throughput experimental data in the context of biological networks, pathways and diseases. MetaCore will be utilized in Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, HIV associated neurodegeneration and Hep C infection projects as well as in the core micro array facility to explore gene expression profiles of psychotropics. MetaCore enables concurrent visualization and analysis of gene expression, proteomics and metabolomics data in multiple formats including LocusLink, Genbank, RefSeq, All Affymetrix arrays tags, OMIM, Unigene, SwissProt as well as other approved gene symbol IDs. MetaCore's content is manually curated and species specific. MetaCore is an easy to use program that can be accessed at the map level or by building networks on the fly choosing from one of our 8 network building algorithms. Nicholas Schork, Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of the new UCSD Center for Human Genetics and Genomics says, "We and others within the UCSD Medical School are developing integrative approaches to understanding the pathophysiology of human diseases that will include, among other things, emphases on DNA sequence variation, altered gene expression, and protein perturbations, so having a tool like MetaCore to help synthesize information about pathways and genetic networks is absolutely crucial." "My group evaluated MetaCore to better understand neuropathological changes associated with Schizophrenia using our high throughput data. We felt that this software can help us understand the details of cellular changes in these disorders so we decided to license it, along with several other groups at UCSD," said Dr. Ian Everall, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, UCSD School of Medicine. "We will be using MetaCore for a number of projects investigating the mechanisms of signal transduction downstream of GPCR and tyrosine kinase receptors. This software will help us to understand the complex physiological regulation of reproduction and glucose metabolism," said Dr. Nicholas Webster, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Genechip Miicroarray Core Facility. "We have had a great relationship with UCSD over the past few years and are happy to expand on it," said Julie Bryant, VP of Business Development. "We are hoping that the added visibility, especially at the core facility, will give more scientists a chance to utilize MetaCore in their research. We plan to continue to work closely with UCSD on these and several other projects."