SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwire - May 05, 2009) -
Accelrys, Inc. (NASDAQ:
ACCL), a leading
provider of scientific business intelligence software and services, has
been named the winner of Bio-IT World magazine's fifth annual Best Practice
Award in the category of Knowledge Management. Accelrys' biological
information system resulted from an industry consortium composed of Merck &
Co. and Abbott Laboratories, who were also recognized at the award
ceremony. The consortium was nominated for its outstanding strategic
innovation in the pharmaceutical discovery process.
"This year's Best Practices competition included a record 72 entries,
providing the stiffest level of competition we've had since it began in
2003," said Kevin Davies, editor-in-chief, Bio-IT World. "The entry
nominated by Accelrys really impressed the judges for its success in
demonstrating the value of pre-competitive knowledge sharing among big
pharma clients. We hope this signals a new trend that can only benefit the
industry and, by extension, the practice of medicine."
Accelrys' award winning product, "Biological Knowledge Management:
Registration, Association & Sharing," is the result of a three year
collaboration between Accelrys and two of the world's leading
pharmaceutical companies. Abbott and Merck joined with Accelrys to
collaborate on solving a critical business problem at a fraction of the
cost of working separately. Although the difficulties related to IT
infrastructure for registering and relating biological materials is not
well known outside of the world of bench biologists and patent attorneys,
it is a particularly acute challenge for knowledge management, and a
significant drag on research innovation. Biological materials are
notoriously complex entities, which require high levels of sophisticated
understanding to define them uniquely. Through this industry consortium, a
biological registration system has been developed which meets the needs
across the pharmaceutical industry. Built on Accelrys' award winning List
Management and Query Services (LMQS) system for Pipeline Pilot, realizing
economies of scale and utilizing an extensible SOA architecture and
knowledge model, the system solves the current and future challenges
related to IP protection and knowledge sharing among biologists.
"Biological materials are enormously complex," according to Dr. Jonathan
Usuka, senior director of Life Science at Accelrys. "Cell lines evolve,
proteins exhibit variability, and DNA has mutations. All these nuances are
difficult to convey to non-biologists, and yet are crucial if an
informatics system is going to have an impact in state-of-the-art
pharmaceutical discovery. Our member organizations recognized that this
challenge exists primarily in the pre-competitive space, where leading
companies derive more value from pooling their expertise than they could
realize by competing individually. By working together, we achieved a
system that 'thinks like a biologist,' so that scientists in these global
organizations spend their time building on each other's discoveries rather
than constantly reinventing the wheel."
The Best Practices awards were judged by 12 experts from the scientific,
IT, and business communities who reviewed a total of 72 submissions from
organizations ranging from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
to academic institutions and government research agencies.
Full details of the 2009 Best Practices winners and entries will be
published in the July/August issue of Bio-IT World.
About Accelrys, Inc.
Headquartered in San Diego, California, Accelrys develops scientific business intelligence software and
solutions for the life sciences, energy, chemicals, aerospace, and consumer
products industries. Customers include many
Fortune 500 companies and other commercial entities, as well as academic
and government entities. Accelrys has a vast portfolio of computer-aided
design modeling and simulation offerings which assist customers in
conducting scientific experiments 'in silico' in order to reduce the
duration and cost of discovering and developing new drugs and materials.
Its scientific business
intelligence platform underlies the company's computer-aided design
modeling and simulation offerings. The Accelrys platform can be used with
both Accelrys and competitive products, as well as with customers'
proprietary predictive science products. Its flexibility, ease-of-use and
advanced chemical, text and image analysis and reporting capabilities
enable customers to mine, aggregate, analyze and report scientific data
from disparate sources, thereby better utilizing scientific data within
their organizations. For more information about Accelrys, visit
http://accelrys.com/
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Such statements,
including statements relating to the Company's products, their features,
and their impact upon our customers' organizations, are subject to risks
and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the risk that our products
will not be successfully developed, achieve market acceptance, have the
anticipated impact upon our customers' organizations, and other risks and
uncertainties described in documents Accelrys has filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission, including its most recent report on Form 10-K and
any subsequent interim filings. All forward-looking statements in this
document are qualified entirely by the cautionary statements included in
this document and such filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause
actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by
forward-looking statements contained in this document. These
forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this document.
Accelrys disclaims any intent or obligation to publicly update or revise
any
forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in its
expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or
circumstances on which any such statement is based.
