Company Announcements

In May, Optibrium, a developer of software for small molecule design and optimization, entered into a collaboration with Imperial College London and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. The collaboration includes student access and training.

Optibrium signed in September a collaboration agreement with AI firm Intellegens, whose deep learning tool, Alchemite, improves drug discovery models.

In June, genomics cloud computing company Ziliomics received seed financing from the Prospects Oncology Fund.

In July, ELN firm BioData named Steve Yemm, vice president of Sales, as CEO.

ELN firm labfolder entered into a collaboration in July with NEC Deutschland, a company integrating IT and network technologies. NEC and labfolder plan to offer a simple, cost effective and scalable package solution for IT infrastructure.

In July, LIMS firm Accelerated Technology Laboratories was named a validated software provider for Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting Compliance (METRC) in California, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon, with additional states in the planning phase. METRC, a regulatory compliance system for the cannabis industry, is designed to track cannabis production from seed to sale.

Simulations Plus, a provider of modeling and simulations solutions, announced in July a one-year funded research collaboration with a large European consortium to further develop and validate the mechanistic Transdermal Compartmental Absorption and Transit model in its GastroPlus platform.

In July, DILIsym Services, a Simulations Plus company, was awarded a $1.7 million Fast-Track Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The funding will contribute to the development RENAsym software for the investigation and screening of possible drug-induced kidney damage.

In September, Simulations Plus entered into a one-year funded extension to its previous cooperative agreement with the US FDA to further develop and validate the mechanistic Ocular Compartmental Absorption and Transit (OCAT) model in GastroPlus.

Google Cloud announced in July that it has joined the NIH’s Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) initiative for biomedical research. The company plan to make some of the most important NIH-funded datasets available to users with appropriate privacy controls.

In July, ACD/Labs announced its continued collaboration using ChemSpider, a chemical database owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry, to furnish predicted physicochemical properties and chemical nomenclature. ChemSpider will use ACD/Percepta’s prediction algorithms and ACD/Name tools in a batch-­wise fashion to populate the database and enhance publicly available chemical intelligence.

In August, ELN firm Collaborative Drug Discovery signed a reseller agreement with Zastra Innovations for India.

Biomatters announced in August that Geneious, its desktop suite of molecular biology and sequence analysis tools, will be renamed Geneious Prime later this year.

In September, Qlucore and Nebion announced an integration of their respective Qlucore Omics Explorer and Genevestigator platforms to provide an end-to-end solution for gene expression analysis.

Eagle Genomics was awarded co-sell status in September as part of the Microsoft for Startups Program, which provides access to Microsoft Enterprise customers.

In September, IDBS, a Danaher company, named Christian Marcazzo as vice president and general manager. He was previously vice president, Analytics & Search, at PerkinElmer Informatics.

Product Introductions

In July, Sage Bionetworks launched the Agora platform, an interactive, web-based tool that allows researchers to explore curated genomic analyses of Alzheimer’s Disease. The content is based on the NIH-led Accelerating Medicines Partnership—Alzheimer’s Disease (AMP-AD) Target Discovery and Preclinical Validation Project.

In August, LabVantage Solutions previewed its LabVantage Cannabis platform, a LIMS designed specifically for cannabis testing and certification.

Sales and Order of Note

In August, Genedata announced that clinical-stage biotech company Aptevo Therapeutics has adopted the company as its preferred bioinformatics solutions provider.