GNS was founded two years ago, and just 10 months ago it received funding of $125,000 from the Cornell Big Red Venture Fund, a venture capital group operated by students of Cornell's S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management. The investment was the fund's first in biotechnology.
Scientists at GNS will use the new federal grant to learn how pharmaceuticals work against parts of cancer cells. "We've mapped the cell pathways, and we have created the world's largest computer simulation of a human cancer cell. However, we need to generate more biological data to confirm how our simulation works. This grant helps pay for that research," says co-founder Colin Hill, a Cornell doctoral candidate in physics. GNS co-founder Iya Khalil obtained her doctorate at Cornell in 2001.
Two Cornell faculty members will advise in the research: Richard A. Cerione, professor of molecular medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine, and Steven Strogatz, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, sit on the company's scientific advisory board. Bruce Ganem, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, is a company consultant.
Hill said the grant would provide enough money to hire five to seven more researchers to perform micro-array and proteomics experiments.
During the three-year project, researchers will process large quantities of new data with new and existing proprietary software to create computer models, or simulations, of normal and cancerous cells as a means of rapidly identifying nontoxic drug targets. Using the company's existing 500-component cell model and simulation tools
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Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
bpf2@cornell.edu
607-255-3290
Cornell University News Service
22-Oct-2002