About Pathway Solutions
Pathway Solutions was established in 2000 for handling licensing of KEGG in response to a number of companies who were interested in using KEGG at that time. Pathway Solutions is now an integral part of the KEGG project, as the licensing revenue received from commercial users is fully reinvested to further develop KEGG and to continue to make it freely available to academic users.
About the KEGG Project
The KEGG database project was initiated in 1995 under the Japanese Human Genome Project and then expanded with various research grants. Since 2011 the government funding started to decrease and it now covers less than 10% of the total operation cost. However, thanks to the support provided by commercial KEGG licensees, KEGG continues to advance as a self-sustaining academic project.
Commercial Use of KEGG
In the spirit of academic cooperation,
Kanehisa Laboratories serves the international research community by providing free access to the
KEGG website on a trust basis. Commercial companies are requested to obtain proper KEGG licenses when they make use of KEGG in their research and other activities.
Pathway Solutions operates a KEGG data download site and a mirror site of KEGG web services for licensed users.