Year: 2001-02

Company: Zuyder Pharmaceuticals

Liaison(s):

Zuyder Pharmaceuticals is a recently founded drug discovery company focusing on leveraging their expertise in proteomics to expedite the drug discovery process. This Masters Project will utilize Zuyder’s novel proteomic technology to create a validated database of protein interactions that will be used by the company to discover drug targets. The team consists of four students with backgrounds in the fields of mathematics, physics, economics, computer science, and engineering. This team is concentrating on bioinformatics and business development in their second year courses at KGI. The progress of the project will be measured with the completion of a series of milestones. The first is a database of putative protein functions and the second a validated database of protein-protein interactions. The completion of the project will also include a business plan that proposes how this database should be commercialized. Throughout the project the students will be exposed to the business aspects of a start-up company and will further develop skills in the field of bioinformatics.