UC Berkeley Expands Molecular Toxicology Curriculum to Include GeneGo's Platform
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GeneGo, Inc. has announced that UC Berkeley will expand the use of its MetaCore/MetaDrug Discovery Platform in their Computational Toxicology course, a required component for Molecular Toxicology majors, and in undergrad honors research programs.
The agreement will provide students with chemical structure, network and pathway analysis tools needed to analyze complex omics datasets and to predict and understand the beneficial and potentially harmful effects of chemicals in humans and other species.
"When we designed our Computational Toxicology course a few years ago we anticipated a shift in the future toward 'systems biology' that is, looking at the complex interactions of metabolic, genetic, protein, and cellular elements with the goal of modeling entire systems in relation to chemical stresses," said Dale Johnson, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, who designed and teaches the Computational Toxicology course.
"The complexity of these chemical/biological interactions resulting from environmental exposures, food sources, or pharmaceutical compounds, highlights our thinking that an overall systems approach will be necessary if relevant advances are to be made in applying computational solutions. GeneGo has presented us with an outstanding platform that continues to grow in functionality each year. We are extremely pleased to be able to utilize MetaCore/MetaDrug as the core part of our coursework," said Johnson.
"We are pleased with the decision of UC Berkeley's Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology to include our tools in its curriculum, which is one of the very best in the world," said Julie Bryant, Vice President of Business Development for GeneGo.
"The study of fundamental biology is changing quickly with omics technology and systems level analysis, and these changes affect application fields such as toxicology. UC Berkeley will be educating a new breed of toxicology researchers that are needed for the future success of taking drugs to market."
