One of the first of its kind in the nation, the new center will accelerate the pace of biomedical research, directly impact patient care and provide new funding opportunities for both TGen and ASU. George Poste, director of the Biodesign Institute, and Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of TGen, will oversee the center. Systems biology is an emerging science that requires highly-integrated efforts between biologists, physicians, chemists, engineers and computer scientists. It combines "wet lab" research with "dry lab" computational technologies to help identify the molecular pathways relevant to disease. The resulting benefits to medicine may include better clinical trials, personalized therapies and improved diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.

"Much of our focus at Biodesign is in trying to understand biological function and the significance of disease at the most fundamental level: its molecular circuitry," said Poste. "This knowledge has enormous implications for every aspect of medicine, as well as other fields of science."

"At TGen, our focus is entirely on developing earlier diagnostics and smarter treatments," said Trent. "This new collaboration leverages the fast-growing field of computational biology to speed research and directly impact patients. Additionally, this partnership opens the door to new research and funding avenues for both TGen and ASU."

Accelerating Research

The Center for Systems and Computational Biology will use the extraordinary power of the ASU-TGen supercomputer to accelerate research by quickly analyzing the billions of data points generated by genetic research. For example, a researcher at a major U.S. university estimated it would take hi
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Contact: Joe Caspermeyer
joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu
480-727-0369
Arizona State University
6-Feb-2006