Tripos announces Abbott informatics agreement
collaboration with Abbott, which is to concentrate on chemical
design and synthesis in a deal that mirrors, those announced
earlier in Q1 with Genzyme, GSK Research and Development and
Schering-Plough Research Institute.
The deal aims to build on the success of high-throughput technologies in pharmaceutical research, which has become highly dependent on the close coupling of informatics and experimental science.
Drug discovery and development is a complex process requiring the generation of very large amounts of data and information. Currently this is a largely unmet informatics challenge that drug discovery companies are keen to resolve.
Under the terms of the agreement, the chemistry collaboration with Abbott is to design, synthesise and purify high-quality, novel, drug-like compounds to expand Abbott's compound file collection.
Tripos and Abbott will collaborate in library design, analysis and synthesis. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"With its fully integrated, information-driven chemistry operations, including cutting-edge ChemCore and ChemSpace technologies, Tripos is positioned to add value to the chemical libraries delivered to Abbott," said John McAlister, president and chief executive officer of >Tripos.
Tripos are currently entering a wave of new deals in the Chemistry Services Business across Europe and North America with a combination of new partnerships and extensions with CeNeS, Gemin X Biotechnologies, and Genzyme.
A deal involving Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which was formed at the start of 2006, could result in Tripos receiving approximately $5 million (€4.1 million) in software license and professional services fees over the next 12-18 months.
The company has recently introduced its LeadDiscovery Program, designed to develop novel leads. This program aims to identify early-stage drug candidates in specific therapeutic areas that have achieved proof of principle and are more likely to enter the clinical phase.
Initial LeadDiscovery compound sets contain novel, selective inhibitors with demonstrated potency and selectivity toward G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and kinases.
Analysts claim that the industry are on the verge of an exciting new era of drug discovery informatics in which methods and approaches dealing with creating knowledge from information and information from data are undergoing a paradigm shift.
Large amounts of data are generated using a variety of innovative technologies and the limiting step is accessing, searching and integrating this data. Moreover, the tendency is to move crucial development decisions earlier in the discovery process.
Inevitably, the integration of heterogeneous, distributed data are required. Mining and integration of domain specific information such as chemical and genomic data will continue to develop.
Management and searching of textual, graphical and undefined data that are currently difficult will become an integral part of data searching and an essential component of building information- and knowledge bases.
