Basel, 2005/01/18

Today, Athelas S.A. and Genedata AG announced that they have entered into a collaboration to identify and characterize inhibitors of bacterial pathogenicity. At the core of the collaboration is Genedata's Phylosopher technology, a computational system for comprehensive integration of experimental data and its interpretation. The system comes with a wide range of tools for target identification and validation as well as compound evaluation and prioritization. Genedata Phylosopher represents the core of Athelas' computational research infrastructure. Additionally, Genedata will provide consulting services to customize the system to Athelas' proprietary technology.

"The research processes that we have implemented at Athelas will be comprehensively supported by the Genedata Phylosopher system. Phylosopher facilitates centralized data storage, and standardizes and streamlines our data analysis processes. Linking the enormous amounts of phenotype data produced by our core technology DiVi requires a scalable system that puts the data coming from our cell-based assays and animal studies into a meaningful biological context," says Jean-Pierre Paccaud, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Athelas.

"Genedata Phylosopher is broadly used from identifying and characterizing the functional context of qualified targets, supporting the development of advanced assay systems, and to further characterize and evaluate the molecular mechanisms-of-action of the lead compounds found in our HT screens. Phylosopher represents a system that intuitively shows our phenotype data in the context of the most recent information of all relevant regulatory, signaling and metabolic pathways," says Mohammed Benghezal, PhD, Director Genetics and Molecular Biology of Athelas.

"We are proud to add Athelas, a very innovative drug discovery company to our growing list of partners using our computational platform in their research programs. We are happy to have developed a flexible technology that can easily cope with novel research approaches. We are confident that Genedata Phylosopher will significantly contribute to the discovery and development of new chemical entities for combating infections caused by resistant pathogens," says Othmar Pfannes, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Genedata.