Optibrium, a provider of software solutions for drug discovery, celebrates two significant milestones: its first year of trading and signing its 25^th customer. Based in Cambridge, UK, Optibrium (www.optibrium.com) has a global customer base ranging from top-ten pharma companies to small biotechs and academic groups, including Johnson & Johnson PR&D, Pfizer, Merck Serono, Teijin Pharma Ltd., Galapagos N.V., MRC Technology, The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research and The University of Dundee. 

Founded in 2009 as a spin-out of one of Galapagos service divisions:  BioFocus, Optibrium has been selected by these companies for its software solution StarDrop that helps drug discovery scientists to guide their decisions while designing and prioritising high quality compounds. StarDrop combines predictive ADME models, P450 metabolism predictions and robust automatic QSAR model building with its own unique approaches such as the Glowing Molecule^TM and Probabilistic Scoring. These quickly focus resources on chemistries with a high chance of success improving the efficiency and productivity of hit-to-lead and lead optimisation. Visit the online community at http://www.optibrium.com/community/ for further discussions on improving the productivity of drug discovery.  

Professor Paul Wyatt, Director of Drug Discovery, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, comments, "We chose Optibrium as we needed a software solution that would help us to use property predictions effectively alongside experimental data to confidently identify high quality molecules for our drug discovery projects." Professor Wyatt continues, "StarDrop is a comprehensive platform with a range of intuitive tools and technologies that plays an important role in helping us to achieve our goals." 

Optibrium is dedicated to providing software to guide decisions involving complex, uncertain data in an intuitive way. The company works with project leaders and R&D directors to focus their resources, providing confident decision-making to improve efficiency. StarDrop is an intuitive, easy-to-use software platform that also helps medicinal chemists to identify and design balanced compounds by combining all available data to make decisions. Furthermore, Optibrium offers powerful tools for computational chemists who can deploy their models and algorithms directly to project teams through StarDrop, efficiently integrating computational and experimental resources. 

Dr. Matthew Segall, CEO of Optibrium, explains, "We have grown and evolved over the last year and we are particularly proud of our primary product, StarDrop, which was recently selected as a finalist at the 2010 North American Bio-IT World Expo." Matt continues, "Even after just one year, the great increase in the number of drug discovery scientists coming directly to us demonstrates the increased understanding in the community that in silico tools are not just about generating predictions but should also provide a platform for using all available data to guide decisions." 

Optibrium is pushing forward to the future and has been awarded a proof of market grant from the East of England Development Agency for research into the next generation of technology that goes beyond industry standards. Dr. Matthew Segall explains, "In 2010 we will continue to develop new drug discovery technologies that will optimise project strategy, reduce wasted molecules and experiments, shorten timelines and improve the quality of drug candidates for our clients."