INDUSTRY

GeneGo Inc., a leading provider of databases, software and services in systems biology, announced today that they have received a Phase II SBIR grant from the National Institute of General Medical Science. The grant enables the further development of a computational tool MetaDrug to improve the prediction of ADME and Toxicology properties of novel small molecule compounds. "MetaDrug is the very first systems pharmacology platform in the market, designed primarily for small molecule discovery programs at drug companies and academic centers. Building this benchmark platform, we relied on customer feedback and our own vision for the field. Now, we are very glad that NIH agrees with our development goals," said Julie Bryant, Vice President, business development. "Our customers particularly like the flexibility of the system which makes their version of MetaDrug specific to their chemistry space and informatics environment. We will continue working in this direction. New funding will also allow us to expand applicability of MetaDrug in other areas of biological effects of drug action such as pharmacogenomics, prediction of side effects and new therapeutic indications." "This funding will enable us to expand the scope of MetaDrug integrating predictive algorithms for ADME/TOX properties, and add a database of ligand-protein interactions from other species, in addition to humans," said Dr. Sean Ekins, Vice President of Computational Biology, GeneGo. "We will develop large in vitro datasets for drug interactions with key human cytochrome P450s that will be used to build predictive algorithms to complement those currently in MetaDrug. We also intend to integrate a novel algorithm for metabolite prediction that will allow us to highlight the important metabolites. Our approach to understanding the potential for interactions using predictive algorithms and our core strength of database generation and gene network algorithms represents a novel system for in silico assessment of drug metabolism and toxicity."