BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - The French Genostar consortium unveiled its computerized research and analysis platform for exploratory genomics and proteomics before a gathering of bioinformatics specialists here last week.

Described as an integrated tool for studying the structure and function of genes and proteins, the Genostar platform embodies a unified format for representing both biological information and data analysis methods, permitting users to store, manipulate and compare different types of data. The system is being beta-tested and will be made available to public sector research establishments in October. Private sector companies will have to wait until 2003 to gain access to the platform, and the terms for that access have yet to be decided.

The Genostar consortium, which was founded in December 1999, is composed of two small biotechnology companies, Genome Express, of Grenoble, and Hybrigenics, of Paris; the Institut Pasteur, a Paris-based private medical research foundation; and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA). A score of bioinformatics experts from those four organizations have spent the past two and a half years developing the Genostar platform.

The CEO of Genome Express, Yves Laurent, told BioWorld International that private users could negotiate economical licenses for the use of the Genostar platform since the project was partly financed out of public funds. Both he and the CEO of Hybrigenics, Donny Strosberg, said they did not expect to make money out of their participation in Genostar, but Laurent said that Genome Express would "recoup its investment by having internal use of a high-performance tool" that would bring it new customers.

Strosberg said "the project was very costly, far more costly than expected," in terms of the unpaid man-hours invested by the participants. But he added: "Making money out of it was not our purpose. The idea was to generate goodwill and develop a good product."

The Genostar platform, which is written in Java, consists of three modules that run on top of a data handling and storage kernel. The modules are GenoAnnot, for the annotation of genomic sequences; GenoLink, for the analysis of genome function; and GenoBool, for statistical analysis and correlation of heterogeneous data.

A particular feature of the Genostar platform, its developers said, is its flexibility and openness, since the user can introduce new categories of data, modify and adapt analytical methods, integrate new algorithms and bioinformatic modules, and customize his or her annotation strategy. The system's designers also were trying to make it as user-friendly as possible by ensuring the interoperability of the various modules and Genostar's compatibility with different operating systems.