IDBS has formed a strategic relationship with the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, aiming to bring promising new cheminformatics technologies to the market through IDBS products.
The Department of Chemistry will deploy IDBS' E-WorkBook and IDBS' suite of chemistry technologies across its broad spectrum of research areas, and will use the system as a platform for many of its ongoing national, and international collaborative programmes. The two organisations will also set up a joint research and development effort to provide both organisations with cheminformatics assets and opportunities.
The Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge is an internationally renowned centre of excellence in chemistry and chemical computing. It is a leader in semantic chemistry technologies and in the use and development of Chemical Mark-Up Language (CML), which represents the emerging global lexicon of chemical computing. The use and ongoing development of IDBS' chemical technology platform through this R&D collaboration will encompass many of these important new areas, including new approaches to structure authoring, drawing and representation, annotation, context-rich chemical ontologies, polymer support and the application of the electronic workbook environment as a tool to enhance research excellence.
Professor Steven Ley, CBE, FRS, said: 'The professional management of chemical information is now essential in a modern laboratory. This partnership will provide the environment whereby experimental data is captured and retained in such a way that it can be searched electronically by its chemical context. It provides the opportunity to apply advanced chemical informatics methods, many of which have been developed in this laboratory, to extract chemical information. IDBS was chosen as a partner, not only for the power and functionality of their software and flexibility to integrate with utilities developed at Cambridge, but also their willingness to cooperate in the development of novel solutions to underpin chemistry research programmes.'
