About us
We provide a comprehensive platform for bioinformatic, cheminformatic and systems biological tools.
The geneXplain GmbH is one of the worldwide known providers of top bioinformatics, systems biology and cheminformatics databases, software and services. We assist translational research in the life sciences and make our expertise available to both academic and commercial partners.
Explore the brief overview of our products or find out more about our company and customers in the company brochure.
Vision & Mission
Today’s biomedical sciences have the unprecedented opportunity to become more exact than ever before. Today, technological progress towards the complete characterization of the multi-layered network of components that together constitute a living system has coincided with remarkable progress in the development of techniques for the computational handling and interpretation of these data. For the first time, mathematical modeling and the computational simulation of biological systems has become feasible across the different layers of increasing complexity that characterize them.
Old problems can now be tackled in new systematic ways. Genomic data can generate new hypotheses about an individual’s propensity to develop a certain disease. Transcriptomic and proteomic data can help to define whether and how a genetic predisposition manifests in an individual patient.
Stratification of patients will enable researchers and clinicians to personalize diagnostic and therapeutic regimes to be applied.
It is geneXplain’s mission to provide the computational methodology required to achieve this goal of “personalized pharmacogenomics”. We wish to help academic researchers in their daily work with easy-to-use tools that are compatible with the low-budget requirements of most academic groups. At the same time, we shall provide high-end technology platforms to fulfil bioinformatics requirements to industrial standards. Finally, we intend to offer partnerships for research and training in the area of our expertise.
Taken together, we are confident that we can make a major contribution to the new era of personalized medicine, for the benefit of individuals and humankind alike.
The name of the company describes our overarching aim: To explain what genes do. The capital “X” of our logo was inspired by the Holliday junction, a structure that has given rise to a significant part of our genetic variability.Moreover, the logo nicely symbolizes how different scientific disciplines may come together to effect a cross-fertilization of concepts thereby yielding new insights: biology, chemistry, computer sciences and mathematics combining together to generate new theories and applications for future health research.
Scientific advisors
David Cooper
Prof. David N. Cooper is Professor of Human Molecular Genetics at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, UK. Professor Cooper is the originator of the Human Gene Mutation Database (http://www.hgmd.org), a very successful resource both scientifically and commercially, which is used worldwide not only for research purposes but also for counselling in human genetics.
Andreas Dress
Prof. em. Dr. Andreas Dress was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bielefeld, and between 2005 and 2010 served as Director of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB) of the Max Planck Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. More about his scientific career and interest can be found here.
Andrey Rzhetsky
Professor Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, is Professor at the Department of Medicine and the Department of Human Genetics of the University of Chicago. Besides his broad range of interests in bioinformatics, phylogenetics, sequence and molecular network analysis, his has created one of the most efficient text-mining approaches, the GeneWays system, to retrieve information about biomolecular interactions from the vast amount of scientific literature. More about his scientific profile can be found here.
Our team
Prof. Edgar Wingender
Co-founder and consultant
Having served the company as CEO for more than 12 years, Edgar has retired by October 2022. However, we are happy that we can still benefit from his advice.
Dr. Alexander Kel
Founder, CEO & CSO
Alexander is the major driving force behind geneXplain’s science and technology. It is his task to let innovative products and services materialize from new ingenious concepts.
Dr. Olga Kel-Margoulis
Director Applied Life Science Informatics
Having a very strong background in life sciences, Olga has acquired rich experience with a broad range of bioinformatics applications. In particular, she is expert in all aspects of database curation as well as in biological interpretation of gene expression data.
Mathias Krull
Bioinformatician
With a background in life sciences and quality management, Mathias facilitates the content curation infrastructure and is responsible for database development and production
Dr. Ines Liebich
Senior Manager Sales & Marketing
Product Manager BRENDA
Ines‘ strong background in life sciences qualified her to build and maintain a number of genetic and molecular databases during her professional career in academia and industries. These experiences made her the ideal person to join geneXplain’s sales team for promoting our database business, in particular as product manager of the BRENDA database
Dr. Holger Michael
Authorized signatory & Grant manager
With all his rich experience in molecular biology, genetics and bioinformatics, Holger has increasingly built expertise in organizing grant applications and managing their administration during the project in his previous positions in academic and industrial environments
Dr. Volker Matys
Customer Support
With his background in molecular biology and data processing, Volker has been working on TRANSFAC for more than twenty years in various functions, initially as database curator and editor, later in quality control and currently in customer support
Philip Stegmaier
Manager Software and Technology Development
Holding a Diploma in biology of the Technical University of Baunschweig, Philip has gathered rich experience in theoretical and applied bioinformatics. It is his responsibility to manage geneXplain’s technological progress and to coordinate the company’s software development, in particular in the context of our national and international research projects
Partners
GeneXplain proudly presents its partners
Database Distributorship
Since January 2024, geneXplain is the exclusive and perpetual owner of the former BIOBASE databases TRANSFAC®, TRANSPATH® and PROTEOMETM, responsible for their development, maintenance, and world-wide commercialization and distribution.
TRANSFAC® and TRANSPATH® are registered trademarks, the contents of the mentioned databases are subject to copyright.
TRANSFAC® is the gold standard in transcription regulation, providing information about the involved components (transcription factors, TF, and their genomic binding sites) as well as the largest library of TF binding site models (i.e., positional weight matrices) to be used for the prediction of potential binding sites in DNA sequences.
TRANSPATH® is one of the largest signaling network databases. It has been integrated with the PROTEOME database, but is also available as stand-alone product. Both TRANSFAC and TRANSPATH are valuable resources to fully exploit the capablities of geneXplain’s proprietary upstream analysis implemented in the geneXplain platform.
PROTEOMETM has been a collection of databases about the completre proteomes of different organisms. Its volume HumanPSD(Human Proteome Survey Database) is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the disease associations of human, mouse and rat proteins. Its particular value lies in the identification of known and potential biomarkers.
Careers
GeneXplain GmbH has free positions for IT specialist or programmers.
For several projects supported by the EU or the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), we are going to develop novel graphical user interfaces and ways to visualize results of our bioinformatics software platform. Significant amounts of data have to be handled in an intuitive and user-friendly manner. Since the geneXplain platform is making use of cloud computing, the mentioned features have to be compatible with all common browers.
If your profile fits the corresponding requirements (experiences with Java/EE, JavaScript/AJAX, MySQL; knowledge of jQuery/jQuery UI, GWT wold be advantageous) and you might find the mentioned tasks interesting and challenging, don’t hesitate to submit your application to:
- Dr. Holger Michael
- geneXplain GmbH
- Am Exer 10B
- 38302 Wolfenbüttel
- Tel.: +49(0)-5331-99220012
- E-Mail: personal(at)genexplain(dot)com