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[news 1999-2000]
Kingston's
high tech sector expands with $3 million investment
in Molecular Mining Corporation
April 28, 1999
KINGSTON, ON -- A unique new Kingston high tech company,
blending data mining, bioinformatics and drug discovery
tools, has received over $3 million to finance the early
stages of its development. Molecular Mining Corporation
was founded by Dr. Evan Steeg and Dr. Janice Glasgow
of the Department of Computing Science, and Dr. Donald
Weaver and Dr. Suzanne Fortier of the Department of
Chemistry at Queen's University and Dr. Lawrence Hunter
from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda,
Maryland, with the assistance of PARTEQ Innovations,
the technology transfer arm of Queen's University.
"We have been able to combine computer science
and artificial intelligence with chemistry and biology
to create commercial products which will command a great
deal of value in the future," says Evan Steeg,
Molecular Mining's President and CEO. Funding for Molecular
Mining comes from S.R. One Limited, which is the venture
capital arm of SmithKline Beecham, a multinational pharmaceutical
company based in London and Philadelphia, and Cardinal
Health Ventures, of Princeton, New Jersey.
Increasing volumes of information are being generated
by the various genomics efforts around the world, and
the increased use of combinatorial chemistry approaches
has led to the creation of massive libraries of chemical
compounds and the development of high-throughput screening
and chip array technologies. Thus, there has been an
explosive proliferation of data available to the pharmaceutical
and biopharmaceutical companies. Says Steeg, "Today
there is a flood of new information, due to the fast
pace of developments in this area. New methods are needed
for sifting through data and discovering valuable biomedical
knowledge." Molecular Mining is positioned to use
proprietary and state-of-the-art tools for data mining
and knowledge discovery to enhance and accelerate their
clients' drug discovery efforts.
According to Steeg, "We have new software which
will allow our company to save pharmaceutical companies
time and money in developing new drugs. With this software
we are scanning various databases to find otherwise
hidden correlations which may be clues to building better,
safer drugs faster. We are also using our tools to find
linkages among genes and to discover which genes may
be important in a disease pathway over time."
Barbara Dalton, Vice President of S.R. One Limited,
says, "Data management, manipulation and mining
are current challenges facing the biological, chemical
and pharmaceutical sciences, that will become more complex
in the future. Computational tools that support knowledge
discovery from large numbers of diverse data sets are
needed to make sense of all the data being collected
at an ever increasing rate. We at S.R. One Limited are
very interested in supporting the development of technologies
and tools that promote efficiencies in the drug discovery
process. The rapid and efficient mining tools generated
by Molecular Mining Corporation and Queen's University
can associate genes with biochemical pathways, compounds
with pharmacological activities, and clinical information
with therapeutic utility, thus potentially impacting
the process of drug discovery from beginning to end."
The term "molecular mining" evolved from the
concept that a few nuggets of "gold" can be
found amongst all the material, or data, available to
researchers. Computer experts not familiar with biological,
chemical and medical data may be at a loss to deal with
this data. Likewise, pure biotechnology companies may
not understand the computer science required. "Molecular
Mining combines the best of both worlds," says
Steeg.
John Molloy, CEO and President of PARTEQ, Queen's University's
technology transfer office, was instrumental in launching
Molecular Mining as a viable business. He expects to
see corporate agreements negotiated soon and products
to be available within the year. "I think this
is going to be one of the next major thrusts in pharmaceutical
development," says Molloy. "Molecular Mining
is a Kingston company, hiring from the Ottawa-Montreal
corridor, and bringing new business and expertise to
this region. The challenge will be to ensure that we
continue to develop this talent pool and resist the
pull towards moving it south into the U.S. The technology
is complex but the application of the technology is
very real and needed."
Contacts:
John Molloy
President and CEO
PARTEQ Innovations
Phone: (613) 533-2342
Email: molloyj@post.queensu.ca
Dr. Evan Steeg
President and CEO
Molecular Mining
Phone: (613) 547-9752
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