Patent ID: 7266458

Claim:
A method for characterization of a genetic agent according to its mechanism of action on cellular signaling pathways, the method comprising: expressing said genetic agent in a cell, wherein said cell is present in a cell culture assay combination, wherein said cell culture assay combination comprises cells and at least two factors sufficient to provide a physiological state of interest involving at least two pathways; recording changes in at least two different cellular parameter readouts whose levels vary as a result of introduction of said genetic agent; deriving a biomap dataset from said parameter readouts wherein said biomap comprises data normalized to be a ratio of test to control data on the same cell type under control conditions in the absence of said genetic agent, and said parameters are optimized so that the set of data in the biomap is sufficiently informative that it can discriminate the mechanism of action of said agent; and analyzing said biomap by a multiparameter pattern recognition algorithm to quantify relatedness of said biomap to reference biomaps that include known genetic agents that target specific pathways, wherein the presence or absence of relatedness to said reference biomaps provides a characterization of said genetic agent mechanism of action.