* Key players: Colin Hill, CEO, president and chairman; James Watson, chief operating officer and chief financial officer; Iya Khalil, vice president of research and development and executive vice president; Jeffrey Fox, vice president of cardiovascular research; George Reigeluth, director of business development

* What does your company do? Gene Network Sciences (GNS) is a biosimulation company. Its technology is used to create computer models that help pharmaceutical companies improve the quality of the drugs they're developing.

* Why is this technology useful in the marketplace? Drug companies face staggering research-and-development costs associated with the production of new medications, says Colin Hill, Gene Network's CEO, president, and chairman. According to GNS , bringing a new drug to market costs an average of $800 million and takes about 12 years. And still, most drugs fail before they even make it to market, Hill adds. About 80 percent of drugs never make it through their clinical trials, according to GNS. Of the medications that actually enter consumer use, an average of just 60 percent provide therapeutic benefits to patients. Using computer models helps reduce the risk and uncertainty inherent in the drug-development process, Hill explains. "We're trying to make the approach to developing new drugs less haphazard," he says. "We're about making the whole process more predictive."

* How do these software models work? The company takes various genetic data, including information from the Human Genome Project, and uses it to help determine how drug candidates will interact with the body. The models can be used in a broad array of applications, but GNS currently focuses on development of cancer and heart medications, Hill says. The models can help pharmaceutical companies determine the effectiveness of their drugs, but also help them do safety screenings. In heart medications, for example, the software can be used to help determine the potential for cardiac complications.* How does this process fit with traditional laboratory testing and clinical trials? "The companies still have to do lab testing for [Food and Drug Administration] approval, but why they work with us, is we can help make those efforts more successful," Hill says. GNS software can run millions of experiments on its computers in a fraction of the time and expense it would take to test similar predictions in a laboratory setting, he says.

* What is your background? Hill graduated from Virginia Tech University with a degree in physics and earned master's degrees in physics from McGill and Cornell universities. Hill says he has been involved in academic research focused around GNS's core technology for several years. Computational advances of recent years and knowledge gained through efforts like the Human Genome Project made the use of the technology possible in a commercial setting, Hill says. GNS was launched about five years ago.

* Is the move toward computer modeling a broad trend In the drugdevelopment Industry? Pharmaceutical companies are moving rapidly toward computer simulations, Hill says. "The costs and success rates aren't getting any better," he says. "The fact is that people are dying when better drugs can't be made or matched." The investment community, academia, and regulators are also driving the move toward simulation, he adds. "We think we can help make this process cheaper, faster, and more successful," Hill says.

* What kind of growth are you predicting? The company has annual revenue of more than $1 million, but Hill declines to disclose exact figures. The firm has raised more than $4 million from investors and has received more than $7 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy. The company is predicting growth of at least 50 percent annually beginning in 2006. The company also plans to boost hiring in the next year. It plans to have more than 30 employees at its 13,000-square-foot headquarters by the end of 2006, up from the current 20.

* What are some of your recent projects? The company announced in July it won a Small Business Innovation Research Grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The six-month, $137,800 grant was aimed at further cardiacmodeling efforts, according to the company. In March, GNS announced a drug-development contract with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, a division of Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. The agreement involved the use of GNS technology in development of a pre-clinical oncology compound. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed.