GAMING

WASHINGTON -- Links deep knowledge base of biomedical and computational researchers and practitioners to benefit industry and academia -- BioAdvance, the Biotechnology Greenhouse of Southeastern Pennsylvania, today announced that it has committed $500,000 to launch the Greater Philadelphia Bioinformatics Alliance ("Alliance") as part of a $2.5 million commitment to support bioinformatics- related activities in the region. BioAdvance is highlighting this and other programs that support the growth of the life sciences industry in Southeastern Pennsylvania at booths 1257 and 1264 in the Pennsylvania Pavilion at the BIO2003 Conference. The Alliance will help nurture and strengthen the potential synergies between the large and diverse sources of bioinformatics-related expertise of Philadelphia's universities and research institutions and the growing need for advanced bioinformatics resources in the region's pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The key objectives of the Alliance include providing multilevel education and training programs in bioinformatics to develop and maintain a skilled workforce; developing and supporting a network of academic, business, government and venture capital institutions to identify bioinformatics needs and design innovative solutions; providing an infrastructure for commercialization of innovation resulting from Alliance activities; and forming what the consortium calls a "computational orchestra" to catalyze and capture innovation in bioinformatics by linking two diverse communities: the region's statistical and computing experts, who typically have little background in modern biology and experts in biological and medical research, who frequently have little background in statistical and computational concepts. "The greater Philadelphia region has tremendous assets located in its universities, medical research centers, pharmaceutical firms and biotech companies that have the potential to make it a center for excellence in bioinformatics and systems biology," said Gary J. Kurtzman, M.D., managing director and chief operating officer of BioAdvance. "The Alliance is creating a network that will integrate and synthesize talent and resources across disciplinary boundaries and through institutional walls, bringing together know-how in science, technology, management and finance to enrich the biomedical capabilities of our region." The founding institutions of the Alliance are the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Temple University, Thomas Jefferson University, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Penn State at Great Valley, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Fox Chase Cancer Research Center and The Wistar Institute. The leaders of the new consortium are Susan B. Davidson, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Computer and Information Science, and Interim Director, Center for Bioinformatics, University of Pennsylvania, and Aydin Tozeren, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Integrated Bioinformatics Program, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, Drexel University. "Enormous amounts of data are being generated by the new tools of the genomics and molecular biology revolution. Advanced bioinformatics capabilities are essential if researchers at both established pharmaceutical and emerging biotech companies are to realize the potential of these new technologies," said Susan B. Davidson, Ph.D., co-leader of the Alliance. "By reaching out into the community to pair statistical and computational experts with biological and medical researchers, the Alliance is establishing a new resource for realizing this rich potential. Ultimately, the goal is to network and enlarge the bioinformatics community in the Greater Philadelphia region so that it will serve as a nationally recognized center of bioinformatics excellence and innovation." "One of our first goals is to create the Alliance's Computational Orchestra for Biomedicine to bring together computational experts and biologists around core bioinformatics topics to come up with innovative solutions to real world biomedical problems. The first 'movement' of the orchestra was the recently completed short course on DNA microarrays," said Aydin Tozeren, Ph.D., co-leader of the Alliance. "It was a huge success, attracting participants from a wide variety of institutions and disciplines." Bioinformatics is the use of computational tools, information technology and databases to manage, analyze, and visualize the wealth of information being generated in molecular and cellular biology, genomics, and other areas of biology and clinical medicine. Bioinformatics draws on expertise from a number of diverse disciplines including biology, chemistry, medicine, computer science and engineering and promotes a greater understanding of the biology of whole systems, from individual cells to patients. The goal is to more rapidly translate basic biomedical research into life-saving therapies.