Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Ex-Biogen exec Gilman joins Gene Network Sciences board

By Marc Songini

Cambridge-based biosimulation company Gene Network Sciences Inc. has made Michael Gilman a board member.

The company announced this week that it had made the appointment. Gilman is founder and CEO of biotech startup Stromedix Inc., also in Cambridge. He is also former executive vice president of research at Cambridge-based biotech Biogen Idec Inc. He joined Biogen in 1999 as director of molecular biology and took over research at Biogen in 2000. Additionally, Gilman holds a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

Currently, he is on the board of directors of Lexington-based Epix Pharmaceuticals Inc. Gilman’s research background is expected to help Gene Network Sciences to deploy its platform to speed up pharmaceutical drug research and development, stated Colin Hill, CEO of the company.
 
Gene Network Sciences relies on its supercomputer-driven platform to enable new types of discovery and approaches to personalized medicine, noted Gilman in a press release. He claimed advances in DNA sequencing allow more systematic exploration of disease biology and drug response markers. The data is no longer the bottleneck slowing the process, but instead the analysis is, he said.

Gene Network Sciences uses its technology in pharmaceutical and clinical settings to turn combinations of genetic, genomic and clinical measurements into disease progression and drug response models. In October, it inked a deal with Biogen Idec. Under its terms, Gene Network would use its supercomputing software platform to identify targets and biomarkers in inflammation using clinical data from Biogen Idec.