The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
October 15, 2008
InforSense, GlaxoSmithKline to Enable Virtual Drug Discovery
LONDON, and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 15 -- InforSense Ltd., the leading provider of next generation business and scientific intelligence tools, today announced it has successfully completed a pilot project at world leading pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to enable virtual drug discovery through virtual outsourcing of data analysis via secure grid technology. The project is sponsored by SIMDAT -- a program funded by the European Commission under the Information Society Technologies Programme (IST) designed to test and enhance grid data technology for product development and production process design.
"Pharmaceutical companies are moving away from the fortress mentality, which has been prevalent for many years, towards an ecosystem of companies working together without geographical or technical boundaries," said Rob Gill, head of biology domain architecture at GSK. "SIMDAT has enabled us to test out all the components we need to support the virtual outsourcing of data analysis in a secure environment. The combination of NEC internet security models, InforSense workflows, GRIA service-oriented infrastructure and data analysis services from BioFocus DPI and Université Libre de Bruxelles has shown how virtual organizations can become a reality."
In addition to GSK, project partners included NEC Europe Ltd, BioFocus DPI, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Université Libre de Bruxelles, IT Innovation and Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI). The project at GSK involved setting up a secure grid-enabled environment to support the electronic outsourcing of data analysis and annotation of biological data to third parties -- thus enabling virtual outsourcing. The system, which is built using InforSense workflows, runs across a test-bed comprising five different remote sites and incorporates data services from two external companies. This demonstrates how a once fully internal system of analytical tools and databases for sequence analysis, annotation and "Drugability" can now be distributed across a number of organizations. The project delivers a more collaborative approach to drug discovery, bringing increased flexibility and efficiency to the process, while still ensuring the data exchange is secure and controlled.
"We are seeing a growing interest in tools and software to support the technical and business process aspects of virtual organizations," said Moustafa Ghanem, director of research at InforSense. "Companies such as GSK are looking at outsourcing many aspects of their business and InforSense is providing them the infrastructure to do so."
About SIMDAT
SIMDAT has received research funding of the European Commission under the Information Society Technologies Programme (IST), contract number IST-2004-511438. Maximum Community contribution to project: 11 million Euro, Project start: 1 September 2004, Duration: 48 months, Partners involved: 27. The project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute SCAI in Sankt Augustin, Germany.
About GSK
GSK is one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies -- and is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer.
About Fraunhofer
Fraunhofer SCAI conducts research in the field of computer simulations for product and process development, designs and optimizes industrial applications, and offers calculations on high-performance computers. The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, umbrella organisation of SCAI, undertakes applied research of direct use to private and public enterprise.
About EMBL
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory is a basic research institute funded by public research monies from 20 member states. Research at EMBL is conducted by approximately 80 independent groups covering the spectrum of molecular biology. The laboratory has five units: the main laboratory in Heidelberg, and outstations in Hinxton (the European Bioinformatics Institute), Grenoble, Hamburg, and Monterotondo near Rome. The cornerstones of EMBL's mission are: to perform basic research in molecular biology; to train scientists, students and visitors at all levels; to offer vital services to scientists in the member states; to develop new instruments and methods in the life sciences and to actively engage in technology transfer activities. EMBL's International PhD Programme has a student body of about 170. The laboratory also sponsors an active Science and Society programme.
About ULB
The Bioinformatics Laboratory of the Université Libre de Bruxelles is committed to providing bioinformatics trainings and IT infrastructure to support the research in Molecular Biology/Medicine. The Bioinformatics lab is also involved in several informatics developments dedicated, in particular, to ease the access of distributed resources by the end-users. To strengthen scientific collaborations, the bioinformatics laboratory is a member of the European Molecular Biology network (EMBnet).
About NEC Europe Ltd
NEC Laboratories Europe's IT Research Division (NLE-IT) in St. Augustin, Germany, focuses on the area of parallel and distributed computing, including grid technologies and high-performance computing (HPC) software technologies and applications. Current grid activities address future enterprise service infrastructures and integrated security solutions. NLE-IT develops technology to enable service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based business processes, such as enterprise applications, to be created, managed and deployed on demand. Strategic research areas for implementing the vision of a global service economy include: next-generation SOA for cross-enterprise collaboration and eCommerce, future SOA runtime systems, service level agreement (SLA) lifecycle management, service quality assurance, virtualization, and semantic technologies.
About IT Innovation
IT Innovation is an international leader in research in distributed systems including service-oriented and grid technologies, with deep experience of information and content management, business processes and workflow, semantics and security. IT Innovation develops and distributes the GRIA infrastructure helping business to exploit the potential of Internet alliances.
About BioFocus DPI
BioFocus DPI aims to expand its partners' drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-candidate discovery process. This is achieved through a comprehensive discovery platform, which includes target discovery in human primary cells, focused as well as diverse compound libraries, in vitro and cell-based screening, structural biology, medicinal chemistry and ADME/PK services, supported by unique chemogenomic and informatics tools. As the service division of Galapagos, BioFocus DPI has over 300 employees in four countries worldwide. For more information visit www.biofocusdpi.com.
About InforSense
InforSense (www.inforsense.com) goes beyond traditional business intelligence to provide a completely integrated suite of agile, visual and predictive intelligence solutions, enabling organizations to gain business and scientific insights and optimize their business-critical decision-making processes. Leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer goods, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and communications companies around the world rely on InforSense to quickly, easily deliver intelligence and identify trends in data. The company is privately held, with European headquarters in London, England, and North American headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
-----
Source: InforSense Ltd.
Sponsored Links
Interview: Appro CEO Shares HPC Vision
Appro CEO Daniel Kim provides a glimpse into Appro's vision and opportunities for its supercomputer and high-performance cluster solutions.
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
Feature Articles
Computed Tomography Software Taps Into NVIDIA GPUs
Minnesota-based North Star Imaging, a firm that specializes in industrial X-rays for nondestructive testing and analysis, is employing NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate 3D renderings in their CT (computed tomography) software. Julien Noel, the company's CT product manager, says the exceptional computational power afforded by CUDA and Tesla hardware is increasing customer productivity and transforming their workflow.
Read More...
The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: 18thConnect
For the humanities scholar who may have only recently mastered library and archival finding aids beyond the archaic card catalog, the possibility of retrieving source materials at the flash of a keystroke (well maybe a few...) is very heady stuff.
Read More...
HPC Clouds -- Alto Cirrus or Cumulonimbus
The "cloud" model of exporting user workload and services to remote, distributed and virtual environments is emerging as a powerful computing paradigm. Yet, one domain that challenges this model in its characteristics and needs is high performance computing.
Read More...
Top Headlines
Dawning 6000 to Use Chinese-Made Loongson Processor
Nov 28 | People's Daily Online | Currently under development, the Dawning 6000 HPC system will be based on the Chinese-made "Loongson" microprocessor. Read more...
Can Supercomputers Help Save the Economy?
Nov 27 | Computerworld | The use of supercomputers to increase the industrial might of the U.S. has amounted to little more than an asterisk from a financial standpoint in both the federal budget and the economy as a whole. Read more...
IBM to Establish 'Collaboratory' in Dublin
Nov 26 | Science Business | IBM is getting ready to set up a supercomputing research “collaboratory” in Dublin, Ireland. Read more...
Texan Prof Sees Big Future for Graphene Storage
Nov 25 | The Register | A Rice University professor believes that his proposed graphene arrays could be many times denser and faster than existing storage tech, and they'd be more reliable too. Read more...
Super Micro Computer: A One-Man, or at Least One-Family, Powerhouse
Nov 24 | The New York Times | Server maker Super Micro Computer lives by two principles: give customers what they want, and do it as fast as humanly possible. Read more...
Multimedia
Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution
BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.
Newsletters
Stay informed! Subscribe to HPCwire email Newsletters.
Get updates and insights on the High Productivity Computing industry delivered driectly to your inbox.
HPC Job Bank
-
Sr. Systems Developer/Engineer
Ohio State University -
HPC System Administration Specialist
Argonne National Laboratory - Visit the HPCwire Job Bank
Featured Events
-
February 24-27, 2009
TradeTech Architecture 2009
London England
-
April 13-16, 2009
Symposium 2009: LEAN, CLEAN, and GREEN
New York , NY
USA