ENGINEERING

GeneGo, Inc., a leading provider of software and databases for systems biology, today announced that ALTANA Pharma AG has licensed MetaCore. MetaCore is a comprehensive platform that contains proprietary, manually curated, human data that is curated by GeneGo's staff of PhD's following strict quality control guidelines. The database architecture is flexible, which allows changes to be made quickly and makes integration straight forward. This was a key component to ALTANA when choosing a systems biology platform. MetaCore also has a software component that allows for concurrent visualization of multiple types of data. GeneGo has led the way in systems biology to allow more than just microarray data to be visualized in the context of pathways. "We will use MetaCore for biological interpretation of genomics data and hypothesis generation," said Timo Wittenberger, Ph.D., leader of the bioinformatics group at ALTANA Pharma. "Our aim is a more profound understanding of patho-mechanisms which will allow us to develop more innovative drugs. MetaCore helps us here by representing our data in the context of public knowledge." "We are pleased to have more international companies using MetaCore based on its comprehensive coverage and its flexible architecture that will allow them to integrate MetaCore in to their current environment," said Tatiana Nikolskaya, Ph.D., President and CSO of GeneGo. "ALTANA is known for its research in the areas of gastrointestinal and respiratory indications and we are pleased that they are using MetaCore to provide more insight to their drug discovery effort in these areas."