In a deal that marks the beginning of the integration between
genomics and
the chemical sciences,
LION bioscience AG (Neuer Markt: LIO, Nasdaq:
LEON), and
Bayer AG (Dax: BAY) announced today that they have expanded
their existing bio
informatics IT-partnership into the field of pharmacophore
informatics. As a key feature, pharmacophore informatics will identify the
relevant structural elements present in the increasing amounts of biological
and chemical structures that are being delivered by today's numerous
high-throughput systems. As the overall project leader, LION will coordinate
the development of the novel pharmacophore informatics platform. In close collaboration with
Tripos, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRPS), a
leading developer of cheminformatics solutions, LION will develop and deploy the tools, methods and systems for the field of
cheminformatics to that platform. The extended system will improve Bayer's ability to identify, select and optimize the most
promising drug and
plant protection candidates. The deal represents a major advance in the approach
Life Science
companies are adapting to systematically improve the decision support for selecting optimal development candidates.
"Developing an efficient and integrated system for accessing all of the know-how housed in
databases across Bayer's Life
Science business groups, that can also be crosslinked with genomic information from internal and public sources, will
greatly improve our decision making processes and to enter new areas of active substance discovery,” said Dr. Pol
Bamelis, Member of the Board of Management of
Bayer AG and Chairman of the company's Board Committee for
Research
and Development. "By expanding our collaboration with LION as our strategic partner in the field of Life Science R&D we
expect significant synergy effects at each step of our research process, from hit selection to identification of the most
promising candidate.”
"The
pressure to analyze the increasing volumes of targets and
chemicals is driving the need for more intelligent and
integrated solutions,” said LION's Chief Executive Officer, Dr.
Friedrich von Bohlen. "We have had great success working
with Bayer in furnishing high-grade targets and in shaping Bayer's bio-IT infrastructure. Together with
Tripos we began in
1998 to develop systems that enable the integration and
analysis of the two complex and diverse disciplines,
genomics and
chemistry. Integrating cheminformatics to our
knowledge management systems is the next logical component in the
continued growth of our i-
biology™
solution for the needs of the Life Science industry's whole R&D cycle.”
Under the terms of this benchmark agreement, Bayer will make an approximately USD $25 million payment in the form of an
up-front payment, technology
licensing fee, R&D
funding and
milestone payments between now and March 2003. LION
together with Tripos will retain all rights for the immediate resale of the
software systems and solutions developed during
the collaboration.
"Converting the huge amount of data generated by high throughput
drug discovery processes into information and
knowledge requires the integration of
chemistry. This is the next major bottleneck in pharmaceutical drug and
crop protection
development,” said Prof.
Wolfgang Hartwig, Executive Vice President of International Pharma Research at Bayer and
Chairman of the companies Life Science Research Committee. "The volume of new biological data being generated is
unprecedented, and it is only through the intelligent marriage of
biology and chemistry that this new knowledge will be turned
into products. Through our partnership with LION we will establish the necessary IT-technology which will enable us to
better utilize our steadily growing amount of data to identify the key elements in pharmacophore structures that cause
selective biological activity.