Johnson & Johnson's IT-savvy pharma R&D group turned to Microsoft Research for help in expanding its small-molecule drug-development platform into biologics development. The attraction: the open-source library of bioinformatics functions within the Microsoft Biology Foundation, part of the Microsoft Biology Initiative.
Like other free, open-source software offerings, MBF provides programmers some prewritten functionality on which they can build, says R&D magazine. That translates into a big head start over an in-house platform development effort; programmers jumped right into developing a greater level of functionality for drug developers.
The J&J group also has distinguished itself as an early adopter of cloud computing.
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