SRI International Announces HumanCyc, a Genome-Derived Database of Human Metabolism

Comprehensive Software Environment Features First Curated Database of Metabolic Pathways in Humans

MENLO PARK, California - February 10, 2003 - SRI International, a leading independent research and development organization, today announced HumanCyc™, a comprehensive database devoted to the analysis of human metabolic pathways. HumanCyc, the latest offering in SRI's BioCyc™ pathway/genome knowledge library, introduces the first available curated database of human metabolic pathways.

When used with Pathway Tools, SRI's novel software that combines artificial intelligence with extensive scientific visualization capabilities, HumanCyc gives researchers greater understanding of biological processes, allows more rapid integration of complex biological datasets, and fosters improved scientific collaboration.

HumanCyc builds upon bioinformatics techniques developed over the past 10 years by SRI's Bioinformatics Research Group that have been applied effectively in the analysis of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. The database and software are designed for experimental biologists studying human metabolism; pharmaceutical researchers developing treatments and cures for cancer and metabolic diseases; and computational biologists studying large biological networks.

As an essential aid to researchers' drug discovery and development efforts, HumanCyc can be used as a key resource in:

• Guiding drug target generation and validation in a pathway context
• Overlaying experimental gene expression data onto the human metabolic pathway map
• Performing computational analyses of metabolic network properties
• Performing comparative genomics, such as comparing the human metabolic map with bacterial metabolic pathways
• Predicting genes that remain unidentified in the human genome (pathway holes)

HumanCyc can be installed as a self-contained server or desktop system, and features an open architecture that allows users to reference external data via links to human genome resources such as ENSEMBL and Locus Link. HumanCyc data can also be integrated into existing bioinformatics repositories.

SRI has combined its leading-edge expertise in the areas of bioinformatics, data visualization, computational analyses, and bioinformatics ontologies to create a database that meets the needs of genomics researchers and the life sciences industry.

"Researchers have repeatedly asked SRI to apply its pathway prediction techniques to the human genome," said Dr. Peter Karp, director of SRI's Bioinformatics Research Group. "We are working hard to complete our computational prediction of the human metabolic pathway complement, at which point we will begin a literature-based curation effort to connect the predicted pathways with experimental knowledge about them."

The HumanCyc analysis environment will be available in Spring 2003 through purchased subscriptions, and the HumanCyc database will be freely searchable at http://humancyc.org/. HumanCyc subscribers receive membership in SRI's HumanCyc consortium, entitling them to early access to HumanCyc software and database updates, an opportunity to advise SRI on priorities for ongoing pathway annotation, reduced-rate subscriptions to other BioCyc databases and Pathway Tools software, and technical support from SRI's Bioinformatics Research Group.

About BioCyc and Pathway Tools
HumanCyc is part of SRI's BioCyc Knowledge Library, a collection of queryable pathway/genome databases that includes EcoCyc, MetaCyc, and databases for 13 other species; the MetaCyc metabolic pathway database contains data from 160 species. Scientists can use BioCyc databases to visualize the layout of genes within a chromosome, a complete biochemical pathway, of the full metabolic map of an organism.

Underlying the BioCyc Knowledge Library databases is SRI's Pathway Tools -- novel software that combines representation and inference techniques from artificial intelligence with extensive scientific visualization capabilities. The software enables both analysis and web publishing of model-organism databases that integrate genome and pathway information to harness the overwhelming amount of information produced by large-scale genome sequencing efforts.

Business inquiries for HumanCyc should be directed to John Bashkin, SRI business development director, at john.bashkin@sri.com.

About SRI's Bioinformatics Research Group
SRI International's Bioinformatics Research Group is a leader in the development of database content and software tools for the bioinformatics field. In three current projects, computer scientists and biologists at SRI are collaborating closely with biologists at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution.

To date the Bioinformatics Research Group has won two Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contracts, one Department of Energy (DOE) grant, and three National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. In September 2002, SRI received a $1.1 million NIH grant to help further develop the Pathway Tools software that underlies all of the BioCyc databases, and to support users of this software. To date, SRI has licensed Pathway Tools to more than 100 academic and commercial organizations.

About SRI International
Silicon Valley-based SRI International (http://www.sri.com) is one of the world's leading independent research and technology development organizations. Founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of clients for more than 55 years. The nonprofit research institute performs contract research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and private foundations. In addition to conducting contract R&D, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies.