INDUSTRY

Genomatica, Inc., a leading computational systems biology company focused on metabolism research, announced today it's metabolic modeling and simulation software, SimPheny, has been selected to receive an R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine. Established in 1963, the awards recognize the world's top 100 most significant scientific and technological innovations of the past year, as judged by a panel of over fifty independent judges and by the editors of R&D Magazine. Genomatica won the award for SimPheny, a client-server application that enables the development of predictive computer models of organisms, from bacteria to humans. With cellular metabolism at its core, SimPheny is a computational discovery platform that can build virtual cells from their basic molecular components, and can simulate the activity of the cell's complete reaction network. High-throughput data, such as genomic sequence, gene expression, and proteomic data, can all be integrated, analyzed and dynamically visualized within these computer models. This integration provides a natural bridge between experimental and computational research efforts within an organization. Using SimPheny, researchers are able to use computer models of metabolism to drive research and discovery throughout a broad range of product areas including the production of small molecule chemicals, therapeutic proteins, and to develop therapeutics against novel metabolic targets. "We're looking for products and processes that can change people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine. Historically, the R&D 100 Awards have recognized winning products with such household names as Polacolor film (1963), the automated teller machine (1973), the halogen lamp (1974), the fax machine (1975), the liquid crystal display (1980), the printer (1986), Taxol anticancer drug (1993), lab on a chip (1996) and HDTV (1998). "We are honored to receive this prestigious award and to have our software platform, SimPheny, recognized as being at the forefront of innovation by the distinguished panel of judges and by R&D Magazine," commented Dr. Christophe Schilling, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Genomatica.