Monday, October 31, 2005

Life Sciences

New York life sciences firm to open Cambridge location

By Dyke Hendrickson

Gene Network Sciences, a company started in Ithaca, N.Y., is planning to open an office in Cambridge.

The privately held company creates cell- and organ-level computer models designed to simulate the clinical performance of drugs and drug candidates. Company officials say no lease has been signed, but spokeswoman Debbie Pfeifer indicated that plans to develop a small operation here are under way.

GNS integrates pre-clinical and clinical data into computer simulations of human cancer cells and the heart.

GNS technology is designed to increase clinical trial success rates and help bring better drugs to market faster, according to the company.

The move to open an office in Cambridge comes following a series of positive developments for the 5-year-old company. GNS was accorded a Small Business Innovation Research grant of $137,000 from the National Institutes of Health several months ago to further its cardiac modeling efforts.

Earlier in 2005, the company won two SBIR grants from the NIH worth $200,000, according to the company. Also in 2005, GNS signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson.

A division of the mammoth life-sciences company will use proprietary pathway inference technology and data-driven computer models from GNS to help determine the pathways associated with the mechanism of action, biomarkers and tumor specificity of a pre-clinical oncology compound.

Chief executive of GNS is Colin Hill, who was named to MIT Technology Review's list of the "top innovators in science under the age of 35." He graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in physics and earned masters degrees in physics from McGill and Cornell universities.

GNS has close ties to Cornell and its labs, spokesmen say.