NIH Funds Development of an Integrated Antimicrobial Target Discovery System
/CHICAGO, IL and Pittsburgh, PA - October 10, 2006
Integrated Genomics Inc. (Chicago, IL), the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Notre Dame and have been awarded a NIH grant to study bacterial pathogenic and bioterrorism agents as part of a novel research program that aims to develop and experimentally validate an integrated antimicrobial drug discovery scheme. Analysis of the metabolic systems of these microorganisms will identify new enzymes and pathways in common that can be targeted in the development of new antibiotics. These studies will lead to the identification and validation of a series of small-molecule inhibitors against these enzyme targets that could serve as leads to new antibiotics.
Initially, the project will target three Category A bacterial bioterrorism agents, Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, and Francisella tularensis, and two important multidrug resistant bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. A complete analysis of the system-level metabolic organization of these organisms will identify bacterial enzymes whose activity, alone or in combination, is required for viability.
Integrated Genomics will build metabolic reconstructions based on the genomic sequence of these organisms in the ERGO™ Bioinformatics Suite. ERGO™ integrates biological data from genomics, biochemistry, gene expression studies, genetics and literature. Reaching beyond conventional systems for functional analysis of DNA sequences, Integrated Genomics' platform combines pattern-based analysis with comparative genomics and enables visualization of genes in the contexts of regulation, gene expression data, phylogeny, chromosomal neighborhoods and identification of natural gene fusions. ERGO™ contains more than 1074 genomes at various stages of completion, as well as the largest available collection of networked cellular pathways.
University of Pittsburgh and Integrated Genomics expect the current project to run through 2011.
About Integrated Genomics
Integrated Genomics is a provider of bioinformatics products and services for the life science industry, with a recent focus on the use of in silico strategies for comparative genomics. The companies expertise in microbial genomics includes genome sequencing, genome analysis and custom bioinformatics. IG has developed and distributed ERGO™, the most advanced and comprehensive bioinformatics suite for microbial genomics on the market. ERGO™ contains the largest available integration of microbial genome data, including genome-derived metabolic reconstructions and representing the chemical reaction networks of metabolic pathways.
About University of Pittsburgh
The proposed project will be carried out in a framework of a well-established, tightly integrated multidisciplinary effort among research groups of a molecular biologist and physician-scientist with experience in the theoretical and experimental analysis of bacterial metabolic networks (Z. N. Oltvai Assoc Professor, University of Pittsburgh, PI on the project), a theoretical physicist with experience in assessing the structural and dynamical features of complex networks (A.-L. Barabasi Professor, University of Notre Dame, Co-PI), a Genomics company with extensive experience with genome annotation, metabolic reconstruction and corresponding wet lab confirmation (V. Kapatral, Integrated Genomics, Inc. Co-PI), and an organic and computational chemist with extensive experience in computational drug design and development (O. Wiest Professor, University of Notre Dame, Co-PI).
Contact:
Vinayak Kapatral, Ph.D.
Vice President, Business Development
Integrated Genomics
(312) 491-0846 ext.326
Vinayak@integratedgenomics.com
