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TWST: Would you say that the use of computer assisted design in the area of drug development is a relatively new area?

Mr. Reidel: Yes, it’s quite new. The approach that we (Nasdaq:PHST) use really was pioneered and developed in the academic world for the prior 10 years or so before the inception of Pharsight. To make a long story short, it was really by contact between those folks who originally started the company and some of the folks in the academic world who had been pioneering and developing these approaches that the idea for Pharsight came about. As you and your readers certainly know, there is a long way from developing a concept in the academic world to packaging and making it available so that it can really be applied in the industrial world, in this case, in the pharmaceutical industry. So prior to the advent of Pharsight, there have been extremely limited, if any, applications of this approach in the real world of pharmaceutical development.

TWST: Would you say that the information activity side of your business represents the highest potential for growth over the next few years?

Mr. Reidel: Over time, we see our business as being balanced roughly a third, a third, a third between the information products activities and the software products and the consulting services that we offer our customers. So over the next couple of years, absolutely the highest growth should be in the information products side because it’s starting from zero. So it will be catching up with the other two aspects of the business, ramping up to take its place. Over the longer term, however, we continue to see balanced growth cross the three segments of the business, probably somewhat higher on the software products side and the information products side than on the consulting services side, just because obviously they’re more scalable. It takes more time to add people and train them and ramp up the consulting side of the business.

TWST: Are there any plans for any mergers or acquisitions or future partnerships?

Mr. Reidel: First of all, we absolutely have plans for potential partnerships in several areas. We are working on some very significant partnerships now. During the IPO process, this was something that we discussed at length with our potential investors. One is that we are continuing to establish partnerships with major academic medical institutions to be the providers of patient level data that we form into our information products databases. In terms of acquisitions, Pharsight is really the product of a merger of three companies. We did an acquisition three and a half years ago, and a second one two and a half years ago. Today’s Pharsight is the original Pharsight plus the sum of those two companies. Not that we haven’t kicked some tires but we did take a breather for a couple of years. The fact is, it might not shock you or your readers, now that we’re public, we’ve started to hear from people, smaller private companies and so forth, who develop interesting technologies but are looking for a faster way to get their products to market. I wouldn’t expect anything amazing or dramatic or necessarily terribly soon, but on an ongoing basis, we will evaluate those opportunities, and it shouldn’t shock anybody that at some point we might do something modest regarding those.