Leading Edge R&D:

MASS. GENERAL HOSPITAL CANCER CENTER LICENSES X-Miner

X-Mine Inc, a biological data mining and knowledge discovery company, announced that it has licensed the X-Miner gene expression analysis system to the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.

"X-Miner will identify the signature genes that will be used as the indicator of exposure of cells, animals or human beings, to specific environmental estrogens," said Dr. Toshi Shioda MD, Ph.D, Director of The Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, DNA Microarray Core Facility.

Suspected harmful influences of the environmental estrogens on human beings include carcinogenesis, as well as, growth stimulation of estrogen-dependent malignancies such as breast cancer. However, systematic investigations into the biological actions of the environmental estrogens on human cells have not been accomplished yet.

"To determine sets of genes that are activated by each of the environmental estrogens in cultured human breast cancer cells, the Cancer Research Center is using the Affymetrix DNA microarray technology," said Dr. Shioda. "The powerful sets of analytical tools provided by X-Miner will be inevitable in solving complicated statistical problems, which are commonly encountered when extracting biologically meaningful conclusions from the huge number of collections of gene expression data generated by DNA microarrays."

Research at the MGH Cancer Center focuses on exploring fundamental pathways which are critically altered in tumor cells, and in identifying novel genes that are central to both development and cancer. "Mass General Hospital Cancer Center conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States," said Sandip Ray, president and CEO, X-Mine Inc. "The institution has also been named one of the top hospitals in the country by U.S. News and World Report for twelve consecutive years. We are delighted to be working with such a stellar team of medical professionals, and we are committed to the opportunity of providing our gene expression analysis system for the advancement of cancer research and related drug discovery."

About X-Mine

Founded by leaders in the field of clinical and computational genomics from the MIT/Whitehead Institute and Stanford University, X-Mine is addressing the need for strategic objectives and cost efficiencies that can be achieved by scientists from data mining and knowledge discovery for different stages along the drug development pathway.

Contact Bio Com Consulting, Kathleen Schroeder, 805-773-5867, kschroeder@biocomconsulting.com.