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Florida Technology Firm Fights Back Against Bio-Terrorism
Posted: 11/30/2001
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Florida Technology Firm Fights Back Against Bio-Terrorism
Sengent Offers Method for General Public to Contribute to Key Research Effort Against Biological Weapons
BOCA RATON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2001--Sengent, Inc., an emerging leader in computing and information solutions for the scientific and financial community, introduces its Drug Design and Optimization Lab (patent pending). This privately funded project is designed to use emerging distributed computing technology to help reduce public anxiety surrounding biological weapons. The new technology will rapidly uncover small molecule drug candidates to fight the post-exposure effects of potential biological weapons including Anthrax and Small Pox.
By simply downloading a free, non-intrusive software application (much like a screen saver) and donating idle time on your computer, you contribute to the fight against bio-terrorism. Participants do not even have to be connected to the Internet to donate their computer time. In return, they receive down to earth, visual explanations that demonstrate the progress in the fight against exposure to biological weapons -- for which there is currently no cure.
``The realistic threat of biological weapons and bio-terrorism increases the urgency in advancing structure based drug design technology. Bacterial pathogens selected or bred as biological weapons kill in different ways and range from bacterial strains designed in a laboratory that are resistant to known antibiotics, to fatal toxin producing diseases. Since most antibiotics are designed to kill the pathogens and not the toxin, they are completely ineffective once the individual has been exposed to the bacteria,'' explains Doug Nassaur, Sengent Chief Operating Officer.
``Even if it is too late to prevent the bacteria from spreading though the victims body and producing the toxin, a small molecule drug can neutralize the toxin in the same way antidotes are used to neutralize the effect of snake bites,'' Nassaur further explains. Although the antitoxin strategy does not apply to all bacterial pathogens, its existence combined with efforts to ``weaponize'' pathogens against existing antibiotics, support the sense of urgency in advancing the technology for rapid drug discovery.
The Sengent Drug Design and Optimization Lab will leverage current libraries of over 2 million existing small molecule compounds. Its focus is to test against real compounds that can be readily analyzed once identified by the analysis process as showing significant promise.
``The availability of molecular structures of candidate compound targets has opened the door for the application of large scalecomputing to the issue of virtual drug design and discovery. We now have the ability to leverage these public and proprietary libraries along with specialized computer software to discover potential small molecule drugs more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods. The recent growth and availability of these resources, and the introduction of our next generation distributed optimization technology, position Sengent as a technological leader in the new anti-bio-terrorism fight,'' explained Gioel Molinari, Sengent Executive VP and CTO.
The Sengent system focuses on solving computational problems that may be so large they require more processing power than the average personal computer can supply. Distributed computing networks leverage the combined processing power of multiple computer ``nodes'' in order to perform complex computations. By using distributed computing, a network of computers can provide the processing power of a super computer. Distributed computing divides large computational problems into small tasks. A central server distributes the tasks to individual computers ``nodes'' on a network. Each node performs its assigned tasks and reports the results back to the server. The server takes the results from all of the nodes and assembles the solution to the original problem.
Prior to Sengent, distributed computing technology was limited to the casual distribution of research tasks in a batch or non-time critical manner. The lack of real time communication between the central scheduler of the tasks to be executed significantly limited the potential applications for this exciting technology. In addition, the batch nature of the technology limited, and often prevented the incorporation of a meaningful user experience. The Sengent SmartAgent Technology provides all the benefits of the freely available distributed computing technologies and also includes constant communication with the central scheduling resources to process real time and mission critical tasks; customized user interface with full interactive and graphic capabilities which communicate with other client applications; automatic ``training'' of the SmartAgent, with update capability, version control and variable performance optimization settings. This is exactly what enables the public to successfully contribute to a program such as Sengent's Drug Design and Optimization Lab.
The Drug Design and Optimization Lab was established in 2001 to expedite and lower the cost of identifying drugs capable of addressing general health issues and to validate a real-life application of Sengent's technology. This initiative signifies a major advance in drug discovery by focusing optimized, next generation distributed technology to test real chemical compounds more quickly and effectively to rapidly combat biological threats.
Sengent, Inc. is a privately funded technology firm based in Boca Raton, Florida.
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Contact:
Sengent, Inc.
Marcy Holle, 650/341-5779
Communications@sengent.com
http://www.sengent.com
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