Inpharmatica appoints MDL as worldwide distributor for Biopendium
London, UK, February 24, 2004 -- Inpharmatica Ltd., the selective drug discovery company, announced today that it has appointed MDL Information Systems, Inc. (MDL), part of Elsevier Life Sciences, as non-exclusive distributor of its Biopendium database for most worldwide markets. The agreement dramatically extends Inpharmatica's market reach and will bring its premier proteome annotation resource, Biopendium, to a vastly increased number of researchers worldwide. Biopendium is already being used by a number of major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies such as Pfizer, Aventis, Daiichi, Genentech, Serono, Riken and UCB Pharma and is an important component of Inpharmatica's chemogenomics discovery platform, PharmaCarta. Having MDL as a powerful sales and marketing partner for Biopendium will allow Inpharmatica to focus on building discovery relationships with customers that leverage the company's expertise in lead generation and optimization for druggable targets, using PharmaCarta. MDL has sales offices in 11 countries and has pioneered the use of informatics tools in life sciences. It will benefit from the deal as Biopendium complements MDL's extensive range of discovery informatics products and services. "The Biopendium database represents a significant expansion of Elsevier Life Sciences' and MDL's bioinformatics and chemogenomics capabilities," said Lars Barfod, chief business officer of Elsevier Life Sciences and MDL. "Inpharmatica's Biopendium enables Elsevier Life Sciences to bring comprehensive protein sequence and structure data to researchers, along with the extensive chemistry, synthetic methodology, pharmacology, metabolism/toxicology, and sourcing/logistics content of MDL. This means the new agreement will help accelerate drug discovery research across the chemistry and biology domains." "This agreement with MDL means a paradigm shift in Inpharmatica's sales capabilities," said Dr Vimal D. Mehta, Senior Vice President, Business Development of Inpharmatica. "We have already been encouraged by the significant market need for in-house and on-line versions of Biopendium among blue-chip pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We expect the worldwide reach that this new deal gives to Inpharmatica will significantly increase sales bringing our expertise in structural bioinformatics to researchers around the world." Already the world's premier proteome annotation resource, Biopendium plays a key role in accelerating drug discovery by enabling high throughput annotation of genomic data for target prioritization, target mining, and microarray analysis. Biopendium gives researchers instant access to 10 billion pre-calculated protein relationships derived from over 1.4 million sequences from 150 different genomes, integrating structural and ligand information. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Distribution rights exclude Japan. About MDL and Elsevier Life Sciences,A wholly owned subsidiary of Elsevier, Inc., MDL is part of Elsevier Life Sciences. Over 1,000 life science companies supercharge their discovery engines with MDL software solutions to generate fresh ideas and make breakthrough discoveries. By synchronizing and streamlining the sharing and management of vital information and knowledge, MDL enables scientists to work more efficiently and invent drugs faster. MDL is headquartered in San Leandro, CA with offices worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.mdl.com. Elsevier Life Sciences combines Elsevier's wide array of life science content products with MDL's extensive informatics, database, workflow, and decision support solutions. This unique combination enables Elsevier Life Sciences to bring unparalleled solutions to researchers, significantly advancing the efficient, cost-effective development of new medicines. Elsevier is a member of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider (ticker symbols: REN [Euronext Amsterdam], REL [London Stock Exchange], RUK and ENL [New York Stock Exchange]). For more information, visit http://www.elsevier.com and http://www.reedelsevier.com. About Inpharmatica (http://www.inpharmatica.com),Inpharmatica Ltd is a selective drug discovery company that is applying its expertise in structural and computational biology, and medicinal chemistry to the identification of quality drug targets, chemical leads and drug candidates, thereby reducing attrition in the drug discovery process. The Company's lead discovery programme is focused upon the development of 16 novel Nuclear Receptors ("NRs"), a family of proteins widely considered to be both druggable and of high therapeutic interest. Drugs targeted against NRs generate more than $10bn in sales annually. Inpharmatica's novel NRs represent a more than a 30% increase on those identified in the public domain. The Company's technology platform, PharmaCarta, is applied internally and available to collaborative partners. It's a flexible and integrated chemogenomics suite that links genomic and proteomic space with chemistry, and provides a unique approach to hit identification, lead generation and drug optimization for druggable targets. This platform utilizes the massive computing power of the Company's 2,500- processor compute farm, one of the largest in the world. Biopendium and ADME services, both integral parts of PharmaCarta are also available stand-alone. The Company has sales and collaboration partnerships with leading biotech and pharma companies including Serono, Pfizer, Daiichi, Riken, Galapagos, Aventis, UCB Pharma and Genentech. Founded in 1998, Inpharmatica's technology is based on research from Professor Janet Thornton's group at University College London. The Company employs some 100 staff at its UK locations in London and on the Cambridge Science Park. To date the Company has raised some £34.6m from leading venture capitalists including Unibio, 3i, GIMV, Dresdner Kleinwort Capital, Advent Venture Partners, Abingworth Mgt, Gilde Investment, Vertex Mgt and Genentech Inc. MDL and "Powering the Process of Invention" are registered trademarks of MDL Information Systems, Inc. in the United States. Elsevier is a registered trademark in the United States of Reed Elsevier US Holdings Inc., and of Reed Elsevier NV in other countries. Inpharmatica, Biopendium and PharmaCarta are trademarks of Inpharmatica Ltd. All other company and/or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved.,
Countries
United Kingdom