Applying Systems Biology meeting
CHI's tenth annual Applying Systems Biology meeting, June 9-11, 2008, in San Francisco, will bring together leaders from around the world to present case studies about how Systems Biology is being 'applied' to achieve real-world solutions for battling critical targets, and improving drug discovery and development. This year the meeting is featuring a comprehensive focus on "Collaboration" including international projects for modeling the immune system.  Along with data and project results, experts will address logistical issues in an interactive panel discussion addressing collaborating across areas of expertise, lingo and national borders. The second half - "Abstraction" -- will look at the tools and technology that support this new age of science.  During "Abstraction," the meeting will explore the journey from wet lab to dry lab in light of technological breakthroughs, including an indepth session focused on Gene Therapy.

Pathway Analysis Primer
Looking for a primer on pathway construction and theory? Check out Getting Started in Biological Pathway Construction and Analysis, by Ganesh A. Viswanathan and colleagues, in PLOS Computational Biology, last month. This brief overview discusses data-driven and knowledge-driven approaches and looks at few of the common tools available to help.

GeneGo Adds Mac and Linux Support
Pathway analysis tool and database provider GeneGo announced Mac and Linux support support for its portfolio of products (MetaCore, MetaLink, MapEditor and MetaRodent). "Mac-compatibility is good news for our industrial and academic users," said Julie Bryant, GeneGo's VP of Business development. "The Mac/Safari user base is a significant and growing sector for GeneGo so we wanted to make sure we made our software and databases compatible for the IT environment." GeneGo will support latest updates of Tiger and Leopard Mac OS, and Firefox 2. Separately, GeneGo reported GlaxoSmithKline extended and expanded its licensing agreement with GeneGo.

IPA 6.0 Contains Enhanced Graphics Tool
Ingenuity Systems launched IPA 6 last week, the newest version of its pathway analysis and life sciences knowledge software. IPA 6 features Path Designer, a tool within IPA that enables researchers to turn their networks and pathways into publication-quality pathway graphics with color, customized text and fonts, biological icons, organelles, and custom backgrounds. Ingenuity says researchers can now finish the entire workflow - from data analysis to data sharing and publication - within IPA. Separately, Ingenuity announced GSK extended its license to IPA and expanded it to become enterprise-wide.

Faster Digital Breast Tomosynthesis
Researchers at the Northeastern University Computer Architecture Research Lab (NUCAR) and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) are teaming with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) on a promising new breast cancer detection technology that improves breast cancer screening accuracy. The team is applying supercomputing technology to a 30-year-old imaging modality called tomosynthesis, which until now has been relegated to research labs due to its massive and expensive computational requirements.

Called Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT), the system creates a 3D image of the breast using a series of x-ray projections collected during a 20-second, 40-degree sweep. It makes cancer lesions easier to detect among dense breast tissue by creating a stack of 1mm spaced high-resolution slices that can be displayed individually, or assembled into a 3D view that can be rendered for more careful examination. DBT also reduces the amount of breast compression required by traditional mammography, which can deter women from getting an annual screening.

NUCAR scientists addressed the computational hurdle by creating a DBT reconstruction application on their desktop PCs using MATLAB, and then running the code on an affordable Linux parallel cluster using Star-P software from Interactive Supercomputing, Inc. (ISC). Reconstructing DBT used to take many hours and now can be completed in just a few minutes. General Electric is developing a commercial DBT device that should be generally available in 2009. The Northeastern team has been supported by a NSF Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project with ISC, the NSF's CenSSIS, and by Mass General Hospital.

GeneChip Compatibility Expanded
Genedata's Expressionist platform added GeneChip-compatible status for Exon expression with the Affymetrix GeneChip microarray platform. Genedata Expressionist is a modular enterprise system for biomarker discovery. It represents a single-point-of-access for experimental, proprietary and public data, including sample information, raw and pre-processed transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and lab chemistry data, analysis results, reports and documentation.

P&G Licenses AutoPilot
Pharsight reported that Procter & Gamble purchased floating licenses of WinNonlin AutoPilot to use in conjunction with their licenses of WinNonlin. WinNonlin AutoPilot is configurable software that pre-clinical and clinical research scientists can use to automate common or repetitive tasks during clinical pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis and to create report ready tables and graphs.

Upgraded Platform from Metabolon
Metabolon launched its third generation metabolomics platform which enables greater speed and resolution for the discovery of biochemical markers from numerous chemical classes, says the company. The new platform is based on three separate analytical systems: An ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) system with positive ion MS/MS, a second UHPLC-MS/MS system with negative ion MS/MS and a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) system. The three systems together provide analysis of the broadest range of biochemicals in complex samples such as plasma and urine.

Wyeth Seeks SB Director
Wyeth is seeking a Director, Systems Biology Technologies & Analytics. "The successful candidate will be coordinate the development and application of high-content "omics" technologies and analysis within Wyeth's Systems Biology program. With 10+ years experience post-PhD in molecular identification technologies, he/she will have direct experience in proteomics as well as metabolomics and/or lipidomics. Applicants will be required to demonstrate a record of innovation and strategic planning in these fields, and will have a record of publications and presentations that place themselves as a leader in these areas. The successful candidate will be responsible for planning "omics" studies across multiple therapeutic areas, ensuring their timely completion, and working closely with statisticians, bioinformaticians, and principal investigators to convert platform data into decision-enabling knowledge for drug discovery."