ITHACA, NY - September 5, 2002 - Gene Network Sciences' pioneering work in systems biology and cell simulation has been rewarded with a $100,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The six-month, Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Grant will be used by Gene Network Sciences to model key colon cancer signaling pathways and to test predictions generated by its in silico model.

"With this grant, the NIH shows that it is looking at modeling and simulation as a potential strategy to develop effective new disease therapies and accelerate the drug discovery process. It's extremely rewarding to see the field and our approach earning such high-profile validation," said Iya Khalil, co-founder and vice president of R&D for Gene Network Sciences (GNS). "With the NIH support, we'll be gathering additional quantitative time series data in our wet lab to further refine the colon cancer model."

Earlier this summer, GNS announced that it has created the largest known data-driven computer model of a human cancer cell. The company built the predictive simulation of a colon cancer cell, which consists of more than 500 genes and proteins, using its Visual CellTM software and Digital CellTM platform, along with experimental data points of mRNA, protein, and phosphorylated protein levels.

GNS has created proprietary tools to tame the complexity of biological modeling and to integrate large-scale biological data. The company utilizes its Diagrammatic Cell LanguageTM, the first complete language that describes cellular interactions, to visually represent interactions and parse them into simulation code. GNS also has proof of concept for its optimization and network inference algorithms, which infer unknown cell circuitry. The company created parallel and distributive computational architectures for running the models, and built a 192-processor Linux supercomputing cluster with IBM.

 
About Gene Network Sciences

Founded in August 2000, Gene Network Sciences (www.gnsbiotech.com) is a privately held biotech company headquartered in Ithaca, New York. A pioneer in the field of systems biology, GNS integrates biological and chemical data to create accurate and robust computer models of cell function and human biology. GNS helps pharmaceutical companies better understand the complex human biological systems that they seek to affect. The company's technology will ultimately increase clinical trial success rates and help bring better drugs to market faster.

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