Cenix BioScience Publishes Comprehensive Genome-Wide RNAi Screen of C. elegans

31-Mar-2005

Cenix BioScience GmbH announced the publication of its genome-wide RNAi screen for cell division genes in C. elegans as a full article in Nature magazine. The study, also reviewed by a News & Views feature in the same issue, represents the culmination of a major research effort originally initiated as an academic pilot project in 1998 by Drs Christophe Echeverri and Pierre Gönczy in the laboratory of Prof. Anthony Hyman, then at the European molecular biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany). The groundbreaking work, which was also supported in part by funding from the Max Planck Society, the German human genome Project (DHGP) and the German National Genome Research Network (NGFN), also involved crucial contributions from collaborators in other institutions, including Dr. Alan Coulson (then at the Hinxton, UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) and Dr. Steven Jones (from the BC Cancer Agency's Genome Sciences Centre, Vancouver, Canada).

Following the academic pilot, which focused on one of the six chromosomes of C. elegans, the completion of the screen over virtually all ~19,500 genes of the worm genome became the founding project of Cenix BioScience as it started operations in 2000. Led by Dr. Birte Sönnichsen, COO of Cenix and Dr. Echeverri, now CEO/CSO of Cenix, the project yielded new functional insights on over 660 genes, and allowed the identification of several novel human therapeutic targets for the treatment of cancer and other proliferative diseases. The screen has also formed the company's main launching pad towards its present focus of carrying out advanced high throughput, high content applications of RNAi in human and rodent cells to accelerate the development of new therapeutic treatments for a variety of human diseases.

Cenix has enabled free online access to the entire dataset by providing web dissemination rights to one of its parent institutes, the Dresden-based Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. The full depth of screening data from this landmark study, including approx. 40,000 time lapse recordings, still micrographs and text annotations from over 300,000 microinjection experiments, will thereby become freely accessible and searchable online The dataset has also been made available for cross-referencing through other public online C. elegans databases, including Wormbase.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/44707/cenix-bioscience-publishes-comprehensive-genome-wide-rnai-screen-of-c-elegans.html