Tripos Achieves Significant Milestone in Informatics Collaboration With Schering AG
Tripos, Inc. announced the completion of a significant milestone in its ongoing discovery informatics collaboration with Schering AG. Schering has accepted Tripos' AUSPYX(TM) data cartridge for Oracle as the foundation of its Enterprise Chemical Information Management System (ECIMS). ECIMS is based on Tripos' proprietary ChemCore(TM) technologies in use at Tripos' own chemistry research facilities in Cornwall, England, and Tripos' Electronic Notebook(TM) (TEN) systems. The companies are planning to deploy ECIMS globally later this year.
Tripos and Schering are using the new AUSPYX data migration package to convert Schering's existing legacy databases of several million compounds, plus associated data, to ECIMS. Tripos' AUSPYX technology is designed to store and search all chemical types found within pharmaceutical databases, allowing scientists to specify chemistry within a standard scientific workflow environment without having to accommodate differences among underlying database architectures.
"The recently achieved milestone in our work with Tripos to develop the Chemical Information Management System is an important step in advancing Schering's drug discovery processes," said Professor Dr. Rainer Metternich, head of Research Center Europe at Schering AG. "Schering looks forward to continuing its collaboration with Tripos in an effort to increase efficiencies in our research through use of innovative enterprise information systems."
"Tripos is committed to developing and offering industry-leading solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry," said Dr. John P. McAlister, president and chief executive officer at Tripos. "Schering AG has been a long-standing and insightful partner and we look forward to our continued success in developing innovative research informatics systems with them."
Having successfully completed this milestone, the two companies are currently in talks regarding the specifications and financial arrangements necessary to complete the development and deployment of ECIMS. Because these discussions were not finalized as of the end of fiscal year 2003, Tripos will record estimated project costs of approximately $1.6 million greater than revenues that it could expect under the current contract terms. Tripos is required to write off these costs, as a noncash adjustment, so that its year-end financial statements fairly reflect the project status at that time. This adjustment assumes completion of the milestone discussed in this announcement; however it does not include additional revenues that may occur as a result of the renegotiation of the contract. Additional functionality and time that were not anticipated in the original contract terms will be necessary for full implementation of this project. In calculating the amount of the charge to be recorded, Tripos assumed that the project would not continue past delivery and rollout of the current production system in mid-2004.
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