Dr. McAlister: Tripos is a leading provider of drug discovery software and research services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other life science companies worldwide. We combine the disciplines of chemistry and biology with computer science to dramatically improve the productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of drug discovery. What makes Tripos unique is our ability to manage, analyze and integrate data throughout the entire drug discovery process to dramatically accelerate discovery. This enables pharmaceutical companies to more rapidly identify drug leads and to more efficiently turn those leads into drug candidates. Tripos pioneered the introduction of computational approaches to drug discovery back in the early 1980s, and today is a recognized leader in computer-assisted, 'in-silicoý drug discovery. We have applied this technology to add new capabilities to the company including enterprise information integration and analysis services, and high throughput and medicinal capabilities. Our major technologies now include sophisticated software products for molecular design and analysis, high-throughput and medicinal chemical synthesis of designed chemical compounds, and innovative data analysis capabilities that tightly integrate the entire drug discovery process. The company was founded in 1979. It was spun out of Washington University Medical School here in St. Louis. After seven years as an independent company, we were purchased by a computer firm, Evans & Sutherland, and then, seven years later, were spun-out as a public company as a dividend to shareholders in 1994. We now have 225 employees worldwide, about 40% of whom are PhD scientists. We have more than 1,000 customers in 46 countries.
TWST: How would you describe the current product mix?
Dr. McAlister: Tripos provides a range of products and services to help
its customers with the process of drug discovery, including: software
products, customized software development, chemical compound libraries,
customized research services for lead optimization and identification
and finally, informatics consulting services. Software for drug
discovery research has been the foundation of our business since the
early days of Tripos. We continue to work hard to develop new and
innovative software products to meet the evolving needs of our
customers. At the same time, we're putting a tremendous amount of effort
into diversifying, to also provide chemistry and discovery services for
our pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers, and to provide custom
informatics solutions for the management, analysis and interpretation of
life science research data. So the efforts of the company, I would say,
are roughly 50% on traditional software products and 50% in new
discovery services. As these new businesses grow, we would expect to see
the revenue mix change in that proportion.
Tickers included in this excerpt: TRPS
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