Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN - news) announced today that its ProNet® technology will be used in the massive scientific undertaking to discover the means by which cells communicate, conducted by the Alliance for Cellular Signaling (AFCS). Knowledge of cell signaling is essential to the development of new post-genomic era drugs that can block the key communication lines that lead to disease. ProNet will be used to discover the protein interactions within the cell and together with the collected research of the consortium, will create a ``virtual cell''. This virtual cell would function as a drug discovery generator, rapidly testing new drug molecules against an accurate representation of a cell in a controlled but dynamic experimental environment.
The AFCS is a consortium of 50 scientists from 20 Universities, led by Dr. Alfred Gilman, Chairman of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and scientists from Myriad Genetics and one other biotechnology company. Researchers will work from five core laboratories and share data over a new broadband Internet. The Alliance has received a $5 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a division of the National Institutes of Health. The NIGMS anticipates spending a projected total of $25 million on the project over five years. In addition to the NIGMS grant, the Alliance is receiving funding from pharmaceutical companies and research institutions including Aventis, Chiron Therapeutics, Eli Lilly and Co., Johnson & Johnson, Merck Genome Research Institute, Novartis, and the Agouron Institute.
``We are pleased to apply our proprietary ProNet® technology to this prestigious and important effort to solve one of the largest remaining far-reaching paradigms in biomedicine,'' said Dr. Paul Bartel, Vice President and Head of ProNet for Myriad Genetics, Inc. ``This model of building virtual cells will greatly advance the fields of medical cardiology and immunology initially and will become increasingly important as a means to create very targeted, specific drugs for the treatment of many human diseases.''
``The discovery of a cell's protein-protein interactions is an enabling technology, underlying the ability to understand cell signaling,'' said Dr. Melvin Simon, Biaggini Professor of Biology and Chairman of Biology at California Institute of Technology. ``Myriad was chosen to participate in this alliance due to its preeminent position in the proteomics field and its ability to make a major impact on our understanding of the ways in which cells signal one another.''
ProNet is Myriad's proprietary protein interaction technology, based upon a highly automated, high-throughput form of the yeast two-hybrid system. ProNet provides the means to identify proteins that interact to carry out cellular processes. It can be applied to discover a single important disease pathway or all of the protein control mechanisms within an entire cell, or even the entire human protein complement.
Myriad Genetics, Inc. is an emerging biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of therapeutic and diagnostic products that are based on the use of genomic and proteomic technologies. The Company has established two wholly owned subsidiaries. Myriad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. develops and intends to market therapeutic compounds, and Myriad Genetic Laboratories, Inc. develops and markets proprietary molecular diagnostic services and has introduced products in the fields of predictive medicine and personalized medicine. The Company has established strategic alliances with Bayer, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Novartis, Pharmacia, Roche, Schering AG and Schering-Plough. |
