Genstruct Inc., a systems biology company focused on identifying molecular mechanisms, networks and biomarkers to better understand large scale biology, today announced that its joint collaboration with Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRT), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs to treat diseases of aging, has won Bio-IT World magazine’s 2008 Best Practices Award in the Drug Discovery & Development category. The project was focused on discovering mechanisms of action (MOA) for Type 2 diabetes.

MethylGene Inc. (TSX:MYG) today disclosed preclinical data for MGCD265, an oral, multi-targeted (c-Met) kinase inhibitor for cancer that targets the c-Met, Tie-2, Ron and VEGF receptor tyrosine kinases. The data were presented in a poster session at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego.

Bayhill Therapeutics, Inc. today announced that the Company’s co-founder and Vice President of Research, Hideki Garren, M.D., Ph.D., gave a podium presentation at the American Academy of Neurology 60th Annual Meeting (AAN) in Chicago. Dr. Garren’s presentation, “Results from a Phase II Trial of a Myelin Basic Protein Encoding DNA Vaccine for Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis," provides further analysis of data from a Phase II study evaluating BHT-3009, a tolerizing DNA vaccine for multiple sclerosis (MS).

Finding the right business model for systems biology (SB) technology providers has been challenging — that’s hardly a new theme in biotech. Most SB pioneers were founded as platform providers but soon encountered difficulties growing their sales sufficiently to increase valuations. Genstruct, a pioneer in using computational approaches to infer mechanistic hypotheses from large experimental data sets, is no exception.