Genomica Awarded National Cancer Institute Grant; System Being Developed for Analyzing Gene Expression for Cancer Gene Discovery.

BOULDER, Colo.--(BW HealthWire)--March 12, 1999--Genomica Corporation, a leading pharmacogenomics software company developing tools to facilitate gene discovery and drug development, has been awarded a $100,000 SBIR grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop a system for analyzing gene expression for cancer gene discovery.

This grant was awarded as part of NCI's Innovative Technologies for the Molecular Analysis of Cancer initiative to accelerate the development of novel technologies to support the molecular analysis of cancers.

"We are thrilled by the support of the NCI through award of this grant," said Daniel Weaver, Ph.D., scientist and expression analysis project leader at Genomica, responsible for submission of the Research Plan. "Our software will help researchers turn gene expression data into information that will help to identify cancer-related gene and decipher gene regulation pathways."

The product being developed by Genomica through this grant is Expression Manager(TM). Expression Manager is an integrated, object-oriented, CORBA-compliant software suite, which will manage the storage, manipulation, and data analysis challenges presented by gene expression research.

The software is extensible and flexible, allowing researchers to organize and annotate expression data according to their specific research interests, to incorporate novel analysis algorithms at run-time, and to automate the analysis of high-throughput expression projects.

"As a company committed to producing leading-edge genomic technology, we appreciate the endorsement of the NCI and its peer review process for moving into expression technology to help in cancer research," said Thomas G. Marr, Ph.D., president and chief scientist at Genomica. "We are proud to be part of this process," added Dr. Marr.

Genomica Corporation is a privately held pharmacogenomics software company headquartered in Boulder. The company's tools combine clinical, epidemiology, genetic, molecular biology, and biochemistry applications into a single software package that enables scientists to accelerate genetic discoveries, disease gene cloning and gene functional analysis.

The Genomica software supports a range of research activities and provides data that can be accessed and utilized by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company was established in 1996 by Thomas G. Marr, Ph.D., president and chief scientist of Genomica, to commercialize the tools he and his team developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.