ROCKVILLE, MD — Ariadne announces that The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has upgraded their Pathway Studio® installation with Ariadne’s ChemEffect® drug-centric module. This module, along with Pathway Studio’s protein-centric data, is assisting M. D. Anderson’s research pipeline aimed at enhancing therapeutic utility of the enzyme-drug L-Asparaginase (L-ASP).

Dr. Phil Lorenzi, supervisor of Laboratory and Research, Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, who is heading research efforts for this project notes, “L-ASP is a standard component of chemotherapy regimens for leukemia and is also being tested against solid tumors, but efficacy is observed in only a subset of patients. We’re looking for protein and small molecule biomarkers that predict L-ASP response and for small molecules that exhibit synergistic anticancer activity with L-ASP.” Dr. John Weinstein, Chair of the department and principal investigator of the project, adds “Together with data from siRNA screening and metabolomic profiling experiments, Pathway Studio and ChemEffect will facilitate a systems-wide approach to prioritizing candidate biomarkers and potentially synergistic drug combinations. If successful, an advantage of trying to re-position approved drugs, rather than bring a new one to the table, is that we don’t have to wait 14 years or have a billion dollars in spare change to make it happen.”

“Our laboratory employs a systems pharmacology approach to identifying novel mechanisms of action, biomarkers that predict drug effect, and synergistic combination therapies”, states Lorenzi. “Pathway Studio helps us integrate those strategies.”

Dr. Ilya Mazo, Ariadne President and CEO adds, “Pathway Studio and its standard, as well as application-specific databases, provide clients like M. D. Anderson with sophisticated tools that not only integrate multiple types of profiling data, but elucidate drug mechanism and disease progression and to find developmental and clinical biomarkers. Ariadne is pleased to work with Drs. Weinstein and Lorenzi and M. D. Anderson and looks forward to a fruitful collaboration.”

For more information about ChemEffect and Pathway Studio, please contact Ariadne at 240-453-6296 or www.ariadnegenomics.com.

About Ariadne

Ariadne (www.ariadnegenomics.com), a leader in bioinformatics, designs and develops software and knowledge integration solutions for pharmaceutical and life science researchers. Pathway Studio, Ariadne’s premier software product is an integrated database, supporting multiple omics profiling technologies, text mining, and experimental data analysis tools that provide an interactive scaffold for defining and testing in silico-based hypotheses across a wide range of disciplines.

Pathway Studio includes a family of ResNet databases of biological relationships and curated pathways, both canonical and expert driven. The databases are powered by MedScan™ technology, which researchers can use to edit and enhance database content from current literature and by adding proprietary data, experimental data from multiple omics profiling technologies and biological relationships, creating a unique and focused knowledgebase. A wide range of applications are supported including mechanistic modeling of disease, drug action and toxicity, as well as biomarker discovery, cellular and network pathway building, protein-protein interactions and much more. Pathway Studio is available in desktop and enterprise versions.