IRVING, Texas, May 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- BT and Schrodinger, Inc. today announced that the two companies are now working together to accelerate the process of drug discovery and development using the BT for Life Sciences cloud platform and Schrodinger's powerful scientific software applications.
As part of the joint initiative, Schrodinger becomes a Strategic Member of the BT for Life Sciences partner ecosystem, helping provide research solutions to scientists on a global basis. Schrodinger's software tools will be integrated into BT for Life Sciences as part of BT's R&D Workbench environment. Built on the BT Cloud Compute platform and unveiled at the 10th Annual BioIT World meeting last year, BT for Life Sciences is the first cloud service designed to enable collaboration within the life sciences industry for increased productivity in discovery, research and development.
One of Schrodinger's key applications, hosted Seurat, will soon be available on the BT Cloud Compute Platform. This application contains tools that help researchers in the discovery and optimization of drug research and provides a means for sharing real-time analysis across the organization. Using the BT platform, Schrodinger can easily integrate data and scientific business processes, enhancing the early discovery process so that ultimately better compounds can be brought to the clinic faster.
Because BT for Life Sciences was developed as a secure and segregated platform for scientists, it will enable Schrodinger to work with major pharmaceutical companies and other biotech organizations that need faster and more innovative approaches to drug discovery and development. In the past, researchers would typically provide the IT department with the requirements for each in silicoexperiment, which could mean a delay in research and discovery as the equipment was purchased and the platform built. Using BT's cloud services for Life Sciences, Schrodinger can now offer their applications quickly and easily with a click-to-launch approach that uses secure, compliant, and scalable cloud computing, storage and databanks, in order to process demanding scientific analysis.
Dr. Ramy Farid , Schrodinger's president, said: "Integrating Schrodinger's scientific breakthroughs with BT's cloud services takes us one step closer in our mission to empower researchers to improve human health and quality of life through advanced computational techniques. We believe that providing our applications in BT's cloud environment could transform the way chemists discover and design compounds and drugs."
Bas Burger , president of Pharmaceutical & Chemical for BT Global Services, said: "Drawing on BT's years of experience and expertise in the pharmaceutical industry, our cloud-based service can help accelerate the process of R&D for companies like Schrodinger. Our goal is to provide the best solutions to our global pharmaceutical customers that will enable them to meet their mission."
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About BT
BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.
In the year ended 31 March 2012, BT Group's revenue was £18,897m with profit before taxation of £2,445m.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.
For more information, visit www.btplc.com
About Schrodinger
Founded in 1990, Schrodinger is a scientific leader in chemical simulation for pharmaceutical and biotechnology research. Schrodinger's software is used by nearly every major pharmaceutical firm worldwide as well as thousands of smaller firms and academic and government research laboratories. In recent years, Schrodinger has entered into a number of collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies in which Schrodinger's technology and expertise have had a significant impact on early-stage drug discovery projects.
Schrodinger makes significant investments in R&D, which has led to major advances in the field of computational chemistry; it has achieved breakthroughs in quantum chemistry, molecular modeling, force fields, molecular dynamics, protein structure determination, scoring, and virtual screening. The company's full product offerings range from general molecular modeling programs to a comprehensive suite of drug design software. Besides the company's industry-leading drug discovery solutions, Schrodinger is actively developing state-of-the art simulation tools for materials research as well as enterprise software that can be deployed throughout an entire research organization. Schrodinger's methods development and applications papers have thousands of citations and are often among the most-cited scientific publications. Schrodinger's science is continually validated internally and by its users worldwide. Founded in 1990, Schrodinger has operations in the United States as well as in Europe, India, and Japan.
For more information, please visit www.schrodinger.com.