News
2012-03-28
New CEO: Starting from the summer of 2012, Kaidi Ruusalepp is suggested to become the new CEO in CGN. Kaidi started her carrier as the legal advisor of building the state information systems for the Prime Ministers Office in Estonia. In 2001, she joined Tallinn Stock Exchange group with the Estonian Central Securities Register to build up and run Estonian private pensions register. In 2002, she was appointed chairman of the Management Board of Estonian Central Securities Register and since 2005 chairman and member of the Management Board of Tallinn Stock Exchange Group. Since 2010 she serves also on the Management Board of Estonian Service Industry Association. CGN:s board is convinced that Kaidi Ruusalepp is the sought after person who can take on the task of packaging CGN:s drug discovery pipeline both from legal and commercial perspectives and offer this service to the pharmaceutical industry.
2012-03-05
CGN:s CEO for its 9 year history, Johan Björkegren today announced his retirement. "The growth of CGN now requires a full-time CEO that can take recent success of the company's network-based drug-discovery pipeline to collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry" says Björkegren who will remain on the board and provide support for the new CEO who is currently being recruited. Björkegren's choice of time point for his retirement relates to his parallel commitment as a full-time researcher at the Karolinska Institutet. In the overlapping period, operative matters will be handled by the board.
2012-01-04
CGN:s CEO Johan Björkegren and CGN:s adviser Prof. Eric E Schadt at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), New York publish a perspective in the new Science journal focusing on translational medicine (i.e. Science Translational Medicine). The article discuss the promising outlooks of the NEW (Network Enabled Wisdom) biology to reveal disease risk and thereby mechanisms by which complex disease like CAD and MI evolve. This perspective highlights CGNs strategy applying a network-based drug and diagnostic discovery pipeline to develop personalized CAD and MI therapies in the coming decade. “Network identification for the benefits of the patients”. (NEW (Network-enabled wisdom) in Biology, Medicine and Heath Care, Schadt EE, Björkegren LM. J. Science Translational Medicine, Februrary 4th, 2012).
2011-11-04
Clinical Gene Networks AB enters into a collaboration with the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NY, USA led by Prof Eric E Schadt to profile 2100 RNA samples with Illumina HighSeq2000 RNAseq. CGN also profiles additional 1400 RNA samples again with RNAseq using HighSeq2000 at Uppsala Seq/SNP platform totaling 3500 RNA samples being sequenced from the STARNET cohort of 650 CAD patients and 50 nonCAD controls. This is a major achievement for the company and its long term task to capitalize on clinical gene networks underlying CAD.
CGN on the cover of Science
Coronary and carotid artery disease (CAD) are the underlying causes of two of our time's most deadly diseases, myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke. A common misconception is that cardiovascular disease (CVD) mainly in the form of MI and stroke are isolated problems of the western societies, particularly in men. Instead, CVD will already next year (2012) surpass Malaria as the deadliest diseases worldwide and women are equally affected (WHO). The development is particularly grave in emerging economies like Russia, China, India and South America. Already today, CVDs kill 17 million individuals per year (~30% of all deaths) and are predicted to cause over 30 million deaths annually after year 2030 (~37% of all deaths). As nearly 50 % of people are at risk, CVD drug sales account for an astonishing $76 billion annually (2008).
Clinical Gene Networks (CGN), founded in 2003, has developed a proprietary, systems-based, integrated and data-driven pipeline to infer clinical gene networks underlying CAD, MI and stroke. This is achieved by applying computer-supported algorithms on genome-wide datasets in peta-byte scale generated from a wide range of CAD-relevant tissues isolated from unique clinical CAD cohorts and from model systems of CAD. All data and results from the data analysis is stored in CGN's main asset, the AtheroCode®.
AtheroCode® is also the source from which clinical gene networks underlying CAD are defined. These networks contain genes previously known to affect CAD development (we call them "effector" genes), previously unknown effector genes as well as genes that has little or no known effect. However, the most interesting genes are those that are central in the networks with many interactions ( we call them "hubs", like transcription factors, kinases and G-coupled proteins). Since these genes frequently control the activity of many if not all effectors genes, hubs are suitable targets against which new CAD drug candidates can be screened. By inferring disease networks CGN will eventually benefit the patients who suffer from CAD, MI or stroke.
Unlike current drugs and diagnostics defined by studies of disease genes one by one, CGNs targets are in this way selected from networks that can be described as detailed maps of the entire wiring diagram in and across tissues acting to cause CAD. These maps are also the basis for how CGN defines biomarkers for predictive diagnostics and small molecules as candidate drugs. CGN develops these candidates to a stage at which they can be taken into clinical trials in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies.
In 2010, CGN defined its first network-based candidate drug that currently are being tested in model systems of CAD after which successful candidates will enter into negotiations with major pharmaceutical companies to pursue clinical trials.
Please read more about CGN at this website. I hope you'll find the company to be appealing and interesting. If you do and like to know more - do not hesitate to make contact!
Best wishes,
Johan Björkegren
CEO