The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has launched a three-year, US$14-million systems-biology consortium to improve the understanding of diabetes and obesity.

Systems biology uses computer-intensive data analysis to derive models about specific biological phenomena, and can be used to help study the progression of some diseases. Drug companies have traditionally shied away from it, because it can take a long time to see any financial pay-off. But in March, systems-biology research, funded in part by Merck, identified genes involved in obesity.

In the new Pfizer programme, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the University of Massachusetts, and biotechnology company Entelos based in Foster City, California, will examine the regulatory mechanisms involved in insulin signalling in fat cells.