Basel, 1999/08/24

Genedata AG, a privately-held Swiss bioinformatics company, today announced the release of Phylosopher, a functional genomics-based target identification system. Applied to microbial genomes, the system identifies novel high-quality targets for next-generation antibiotics with defined spectra. Phylosopher has been developed in cooperation with the pharmaceutical anti-infectives research unit at Bayer AG, Germany.

Dr. Wolfgang Hartwig, Head of Pharmaceutical Research at Bayer states: "Through our very successful collaboration with Genedata we have created a unique target identification system for our functional genomics-based drug discovery. We have used Phylosopher to analyse more than 20 complete microbial genomes in a remarkably short time. The quality of the results obtained is superb. Phylosopher's sophisticated algorithms enable us to prioritize our research strategies and to identify a large number of novel drug targets."

Genedata's CEO, Othmar Pfannes, Ph.D., adds: "Genedata is proud of the successful partnership with Bayer, an example typical of all our collaborations. Together with Expressionist, our large-scale analysis system for expression data from microarrays, Phylosopher forms the premier research information management system for genomics-based drug discovery."

The number of complete genomes will dramatically increase within a few years from the current 25 to over 100, including bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, and human. Phylosopher is an automated, high-throughput system for gene function prediction and elucidation of essential biochemical pathways from complete genomes.

Phylosopher is based on novel, proprietary algorithms for comparing large numbers of genomes and assigning gene function with unsurpassed accuracy. Phylosopher uses a relational database for the integrated storage of genome and related information. Together with its annotation tools the database will serve as the foundation of an encyclopedic reference system for functional genomics research.