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Gainesville,
FL – July 5, 2004
– Hypercube, Inc. has received word from the National Institutes
of Health that its grant application, “Evolutionary Analysis of Proteins Using
HyperChem” has been funded. This
grant is part of the the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) that
jointly funds small business in concert with a research partner.
Hypercube’s partner is the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution
(FAME), and its President, Dr. Eric Gaucher.
The principal Investigator on the grant is Neil S. Ostlund, the President
and CEO of Hypercube, Inc. The
grant is for Phase II of the STTR program and is funded for two years for a
total of $750,000. Earlier, Phase I
of the same grant was funded for one year at $100,000.
Phase I identified the feasibility of the proposed efforts.
Phase
II of the grant is directed at launching a new product, HyperProtein which will
support chemical, phylogenomic, and structural analysis of biological systems.
HyperProtein will parallel Hypercube’s existing product, HyperChem, but
focus on bioinformatics rather than molecular modeling.
The grant will specifically
allow Hypercube, Inc. and Fame to explore new science and technology in the area
of sequence databases, molecular evolution, and phylogenetics,
with the objective of ultimately generating an easy-to-use commercial product,
HyperProtein. “We are
looking forward”, Dr. Ostlund indicated, “to having a product that is
much more tailored to the interests of biologists, pharmaceutical chemists,
bioinformatics people, and others who are very involved in protein structure and
function but who are not wanting to perform traditional molecular modeling
calculations. HyperChem and HyperProtein, together out to cover a lot of
research space.”
A
specific goal of the research is to understand the three-dimensional
consequences for protein structure brought about by evolutionary changes. Normal phylogenetics looks only at the primary sequence
associated with protein changes from species to species.
The research proposed in the grant focuses on extending this analysis to
changes in the secondary and tertiary structure of proteins.
“For example, can one interpret known evolutionary changes as being
associated with areas around the active site or specific areas of the
surface”?, asked Dr. Gaucher. “We
would like a tool that would allow us to integrate Protein Structure Analysis
with our Phylogenomics efforts”.
The
HyperProtein product is expected to integrate a number of protein structure
capabilities with new bioinformatics tools that focus on bringing a new
graphical interface to this area of research.
Hypercube, Inc. is know for its easy-to-use software and intends to
continue these efforts in a more biologically-oriented area.
It is intended that HyperProtein become a shipping product near the end
of 2006.
About
Hypercube, Inc.
Hypercube is a privately held scientific software company incorporated in 1985 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Its principal offices are now in Gainesville, Florida. Its principal product is HyperChem Professional for Windows. Other products include the Student Edition of HyperChem, HyperChem Lite, a cost subset of HyperChem, and Pocket HyperChem for Pocket PCs.
HyperChem is a registered trademark of Hypercube, Inc.
HyperChem Lite and Pocket HyperChem are trademarks of Hypercube, Inc. All
other trade and product names mentioned are the service marks, trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective holders.
About
Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.
FAME
is The
Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FAME) is a public, not-for-profit
organization devoted to the discovery and development of new science and
technology to understand, diagnose, and treat human disease, and to enhance our
understanding of humankind and its place in the cosmos. The Foundation combines
research and development in natural history and the physical sciences to meet
its mission. In serving its mission, the Foundation is supported by governmental
agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), corporations, and private
individuals.
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