UBI, to distribute Molecular Connections Netpro database of protein interactions and literature curation/annotation services in Canada.

Molecular Connections (MC) announced today that United Bioinformatica Inc. (UBI) has been appointed as a distributor for its protein interaction database -- Netpro as well as its custom literature curation /annotation services in Canada.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Bangalore, India (PRWEB) June 23, 2004 -- Protein interactions play significant roles in various aspects of the structural and functional organization of the cell, and their elucidation sheds light on the molecular mechanisms of biological processes. Having a database of protein interactions will allow researchers to identify drugs that target pathways related to a specific disease while avoiding pathways associated with unwanted side effects and toxicity. Key to advancing our knowledge of biochemical pathways and networks is the intelligent analysis and mining of available literature.

Netpro, a completely hand-curated knowledgebase of protein interactions, contains more than 34,000 expert curated and annotated protein interactions from published biomedical literature. Molecular Connections issues updates to the database, on a regular basis. Apart from covering the bulk of protein-protein interactions, Netpro contains other critical information like protein-small molecule, protein-RNA/DNA interactions etc. All the interactions have been validated through expert curation by Molecular Connections in-house scientific team. All molecules in NetPro are linked to public Ids (like LocusLink), facilitating ready integration of interactions information into proprietary databases. The protein-protein interactions in NetPro are complemented with granular annotations of the profiled proteins with scientific literature information on a variety of important subjects, including Biological Pathways/sub-pathways, Species, Experimental Technique, Diseases implicated, etc.

Jignesh Bhate, Director of Molecular Connections, said, NetPro is increasingly becoming a critical input for various academic and commercial labs around the world researching protein networks, pathways, systems biology etc. Our robust and proprietary curation methodology brings out the hidden knowledge from literature and presents this to researchers in a well-structured, easy to use fashion"

Lindsay Moir, President of UBI, indicated, The high quality data in Netpro is assured by 100% hand-curation and the validation methodology followed by Molecular Connections. This is a key differentiator which enhances the utility of Netpro to the user when compared to the other protein interaction databases which are available on the market"

In addition to Netpro, UBI will also help Molecular Connections make available its high-quality, scalable, quick-turnaround, yet cost-effective, custom literature curation and annotation services to potential users.

About UBI

Established in 2001, UBI is the only company in Canada that specializes in distributing bioinformatics software. UBI provides software for Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), data mining, microarray expression analysis, primer design, protein interactions, proteomics (1D and 2D gel image analysis), and sequence analysis. This includes sales, demonstrations of the products, post sales support, training, integration, software development, and consulting. Additional information about UBI can be found at http://www.ubi.ca/.

About Molecular Connections

Molecular Connections (http://www.molecularconnections.com) based in Bangalore, India is a JV between Idea2solutions Private Limited, an incubator promoted by the founders of the Dr Reddys group (http://www.drreddys.com) and Institute of Infocomm Research (www.i2r.a-star.edu.sg), Singapore, a national research institute for advanced technologies. Molecular Connections provides high quality, cost effective databases as well as text mining, literature curation and annotation services to life-sciences discovery organizations in the areas of genomics, proteomics, ADME Tox, clinical diseases, drugs, chemistry, patents. Molecular Connections develops value added knowledge bases in the areas of bio molecular interactions (including protein-protein interactions, protein-small molecule, protein-DNA/RNA interactions etc), interactions networks, pathway databases etc.