Lion Bioscience, Gene Network Sciences, SGI, Geneva Bioinformatics, Molecular Connections, EMBRACE, Oracle
Lion's Q3 Revenues Fall 65 Percent, Losses Narrow
Lion Bioscience last week reported sharply reduced revenues "in line with expectations," as well as reduced losses for its third fiscal quarter, ending Dec. 31, 2004.
Total revenues for the quarter fell 65 percent to €2.2 million ($2.9 million) from €6.3 million during the same period a year ago.
Lion did not break out its R&D costs for the quarter.
The company nearly halved its net loss for the quarter to €3.2 million from €6.3 million during the same quarter last year.
As of Dec. 31, Lion had €29.5 million in liquid assets.
Lion reaffirmed its plan to become profitable in its 2004/2005 fiscal year, which starts April 1.
GNS Wins Two SBIRs for Cardiac Modeling
Gene Network Sciences last week said that has been awarded two Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Each six-month grant is for $99,960.
One grant is for development of a simulation platform for creating computer models of cardiac electrophysiology, and the second supports the extension of the company's technology to include models of cardiac signaling networks.
The SBIRs follow a grant awarded last February, in which GNS, Cornell, and the University of California San Diego shared a $2 million, four-year research grant to characterize ion channels via a computer model of the canine ventricle [BioInform 02-16-04].
GNS also announced last week the formation of a new scientific advisory board to support its cardiac modeling research (see p. 2).
Sanger, UNC among Q2 Bioinformatics Sales Wins for SGI
SGI last week announced a number of key sales wins for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2005, including four life science-related deals.
SGI said that the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute purchased three Altix systems for genomic analysis: two four-processor systems, each equipped with 16 GB of globally addressable memory; and a four-processor Altix server with 192 GB of global shared-memory.
In addition, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill purchased a 128-processor Altix system with 512 GB of memory, an eight-processor mid-range Altix server, and a 25 TB SGI InfiniteStorage solution. SGI said the system will be used for Accelerys applications.
Two other installations — at the Catalan Supercomputing Center and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid — will use Altix systems for a range of applications, including bioinformatics, SGI said.
Bruker to Distribute GeneBio's Phenyx
Geneva Bioinformatics said last week that Bruker Daltonics will distribute a version of GeneBio's Phenyx software that has been optimized for Bruker's mass spectrometers.
Bruker Daltonics will offer Phenyx as an option in its ProteinScape software platform.
SLRI Licenses Molecular Connections' Netpro
Molecular Connections said last week that the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital had taken a license to its NetPro curated database of more then 100,000 protein interactions.
The Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute hosts the Blueprint Initiative, which develops the BIND protein interaction database.
Financial terms of the agreement were not provided.
EU Awards €8M for Bioinformatics Grid
The European Union's Sixth Framework Program has awarded €8.3 million ($10.8 million) to the EMBRACE (European Model for Bioinformatics Research and Community Education) network of excellence — an effort involving computational biologists from 17 institutes in 11 countries that aims to create searchable interfaces to public databases that will all conform to a common set of standards.
The effort, led by Graham Cameron, associate director of the European Bioinformatics Institute, will develop well-defined interfaces for public databases in order to create the so-called EMBRACEgrid, which will allow users to easily access dispersed data resources.
Oracle to Host Life Science User Group Meeting in May
Oracle will host its fifth Oracle Life Science User Group meeting May 15-16 in Boston, Mass.
The company is currently accepting proposals for presentations. The last date for submission of abstracts is April 15.
Details on the meeting are available at http://www.olsug.org/mambo/index.php.
Remote Visualization of Local Genome Alignments Aids Pathogenic Variant Evaluation for Rare Disease
Ampel BioSolutions, Duke Researchers Establish Fibromyalgia Gene Signature
Pierian, Seven Bridges, UgenTec Acquired, Merged to Become Velsera