Three university academic groups sponsored for the MetaMiner project

GeneGo, Inc., the leading systems biology tools company, announced today that Millipore Corporation has sponsored academic groups from University of Queensland, Sheffield and USC to become members of the collaborative MetaMiner (Stem Cells) project run by GeneGo. MetaMiner is a partnership program for the reconstruction of stem cell pathways and their application in analysis of experimental data as well as knowledge mining. Currently, there are seven Members--stem cell experts from top pharmaceutical companies, the University of Glasgow and Chicago Children's Hospital--who direct the development.

"GeneGo is a well-known innovator in the field of pathway analysis and we were always impressed with the accuracy of their pathways and the quality of experimental data behind the interactions," said Siamak Baharloo, Director of e-Business at Millipore.

"In addition to Millipore's own dedicated team of stem cell scientists, the company has sponsored stem cell research programs around the world," said Ruben Flores-Saaib, Sr. Manager of Scientific Collaborations at Millipore. "Therefore, we decided to support GeneGo's effort in stem cells biology, an incredibly important and fast moving research field through sponsorships to its MetaMiner Stem Cell project."

The laboratories at the University of Queensland, Sheffield, and USC are conducting leading-edge research in the field of stem cell biology, and Millipore's sponsorship allows them to take part in a scientific initiative to develop biological pathways specific to their areas of interest.

"In our group we study human embryonal carcinoma, and have begun to derive human induced pluripotent stem cells," said Martin Pera, Professor and Founding Director, The Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. "What we hope to get out of our collaboration with GeneGo is high quality manually curated multi step pathway maps that encompass all the knowledge in the literature in one place with easy to use interface tools for knowledge mining and data analysis."

"We are working on cell and tissue replacement therapies, which hold great promise for the future treatment of human disease and injury," said Professor Peter Andrews of the Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield. "This will depend upon a thorough understanding of the biological processes that control the pluripotency, self-renewal and differentiation capacities of stem cells and their progeny and we hope to get help from our collaboration with GeneGo to develop pathway maps covering processes to address these issues we face currently."

"Millipore is our long-term partner in pathway biology, and we are pleased that they see the value in this MetaMiner project and have sponsored membership of some of the world leading stem cell scientists" said Julie Bryant, GeneGo's VP of Business development. "MetaMiner is a cutting edge system and their expertise will be very useful in the development of high quality pathway content."