IBM and Molecular Mining Team to Advance Drug Discovery

SOMERS, NY -- IBM and Molecular Mining Corporation (MMC) today announced that they will collaborate on technology offerings that can help researchers analyze gene and protein expressions, discover relationships among the data to diseases, and predict drug responses. The relationship will apply state-of-the-art information technology (IT) toward solving one of the most complex problems in life sciences today: Understanding how interactions among genes and proteins can trigger biochemical reactions in cells and cause diseases such as cancer, AIDS and depression. It will also aim to increase scientific understanding of why small genetic variations within individuals can cause significantly different responses to particular therapies. MMC's product offerings will be augmented by IBM's DiscoveryLink data integration software. These include GeneLinker(TM) Gold and GeneLinker(TM) Platinum, powerful analysis and visualization tools for mining gene and protein expression data. DiscoveryLink enables scientists to easily search diverse data sources and file types and quickly get a single-format view of information, without moving the data or changing its underlying format. In addition to joint sales and marketing efforts, IBM and MMC will explore research collaborations in areas such as visualization, pattern discovery and gene expression analysis. "This strategic relationship couples IBM's unparalleled strengths in data integration and global marketing with MMC's vast scientific and market expertise in developing data mining and prediction solutions for the life sciences," said Dr. Evan Steeg, president and chief executive officer of Molecular Mining Corporation. "Together, we will provide customers, as well as our internal collaboration business unit, with the ultimate IT solutions to improve performance of the entire R&D chain in life science." Through the agreement, IBM becomes a preferred information technology (IT) partner provider for MMC and MMC becomes a preferred advanced Life Sciences data mining partner provider for IBM. GeneLinker Platinum will be shipped on IBM Intellistation professional workstations, and new MMC products will become generally available first on IBM middleware, workstations and server platforms. Also, MMC will use IBM technologies for internal development. MMC's IT infrastructure will include a cluster of powerful IBM eServer xSeries systems running Linux and be supported by the IBM Life Sciences Framework, an open, scalable architecture for integrating data, applications and systems across the entire drug discovery and development cycle. "IBM's decision to collaborate with MMC reflects our strategy to work with industry innovators with complementary technologies on solutions that will accelerate drug discovery," said Dr. Caroline Kovac, general manager, IBM Life Sciences. "MMC's advanced data mining and prediction tools are a perfect complement to DiscoveryLink. Life sciences organizations of all sizes, ranging from start-ups to large pharmaceuticals, will be able to take advantage of the resulting cost and time-saving benefits." For more information visit www.ibm.com/solutions/lifesciences or www.molecularmining.com.