Bayer HealthCare to License Accelrys Software
Accelrys, Inc. announced an agreement with Bayer Healthcare AG under which Bayer has licensed a comprehensive library of life science modeling software from Accelrys.
These tools, which will be applied at Bayer’s research centers in Germany and the United States, allow scientists to gain deeper insight into key issues in drug discovery and development, informing and accelerating their research.
“The breadth of the Accelrys solutions was of particular interest to us,” comments Dr. Alexander Hillisch, head of computational chemistry at Bayer HealthCare AG. “As well as providing drug design tools such as pharmacophore modeling and structure-based design, Accelrys offers quantum mechanical software that allows us to study reaction chemistry and predict chemical structure and properties with high accuracy. An example is the VAMP code, which we are applying to characterize our compound library.”
VAMP is a semi-empirical molecular orbital package capable of rapidly calculating many physical and chemical molecular properties.
“We are delighted to be working with Bayer Healthcare,” says Dr. Scott Kahn, chief science officer at Accelrys. “The agreement is a good example of the benefits of technology-transfer across the diverse scientific disciplines often required to be successful in research. In this case, Bayer is able to complement conventional life science modeling tools with a technology originally applied in materials and chemicals research and development.”
About Bayer HealthCare AG
Bayer HealthCare AG, a subgroup of Bayer AG with sales of approximately 8.9 billion Euros in 2003, is one of the world’s leading, innovative companies in the health care and medical products industry. The company combines the global activities of the divisions Animal Health, Biological Products, Consumer Care, Diagnostics and Pharmaceuticals. 34,600 people are employed by Bayer HealthCare worldwide. Our aim is to discover and manufacture innovative products that will improve human and animal health worldwide. Our products enhance well-being and quality of life by diagnosing, preventing and treating disease. Further information on Bayer HealthCare AG can be found at http://www.bayerhealthcare.com .
