American Home Products

Tools Used
SYNERGY™ application framework, CORBA, Java

Description:
American Home Products Corporation and NetGenics, Inc., have a collaboration agreement for an enterprise-wide infrastructure for drug discovery that will link three divisions of AHP. The four-year agreement calls for NetGenics to provide its SYNERGY™ application framework and collaborative software engineering services to integrate and enhance AHP's bioinformatics, genomics and drug discovery initiatives.

"In this strategic partnership, NetGenics and AHP will work together to address the challenges of integrating information technology, bioinformatics and other related requirements of drug discovery across the AHP enterprise to achieve rapid breakthroughs in genomics and drug development," says Glenn Larsen, vice president, Preclinical Research & Development, for Genetics Institute, Inc. in Cambridge, MA, the site of one of AHP's research units.

Dr. Larsen adds, "With SYNERGY™ serving as a cornerstone of our bioinformatics strategy, we will be able to unite scientists, genomics data, and analytical software within the AHP organization. Furthermore, by taking advantage of SYNERGY's™ flexible CORBA™ architecture and Java™ programming language, AHP bioinformaticists will be able to work with NetGenics' developers to quickly design and implement solutions expressly for AHP's needs."

The agreement calls for NetGenics to progressively establish seven SYNERGY™ installations within the AHP organization. The first two sites have been established at AHP's Genetics Institute unit of Wyeth-Ayerst Research in Andover and Cambridge, MA. Four additional installations are planned for AHP's Wyeth-Ayerst Research sites in Radnor, PA, Princeton, NJ, Pearl River, NY, and Chazy, NY. One additional site is planned for AHP's Lederle division in West Henrietta, NY. Through this collaboration, NetGenics and AHP will link all AHP sites to support a fully synchronized and distributed architecture for computational and bioinformatics research services and software.

"This agreement calls for our two companies to move beyond a traditional vendor-supplier role,'' says Manuel J. Glynias, NetGenics' CEO. ``Instead, this constitutes a strategic partnership, through which NetGenics will gain access to a wealth of drug discovery expertise crucial to customer-focused product development while providing a focus on development of systems and technology that deliver a competitive advantage to AHP. NetGenics is well positioned to support this wide-ranging solution for American Home Products.''

American Home Products Corporation is one of the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical and health care products companies. It is a leader in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications. It is also a leader in vaccines, biotechnology, agricultural products, and animal health care.

NetGenics, Inc., is a privately held company that develops and deploys information technology solutions to accelerate the drug discovery process. The company's SYNERGY™ software framework enables a research organization to link diverse computing requirements within an enterprise-wide information infrastructure. NetGenics' services extend a pharmaceutical research department's capabilities by providing outsourced system administration, collaborative software development and end-user support functions. NetGenics was established in June 1996 and is headquartered in Cleveland, OH.