Staff Writer

Looking to take advantage of its own capabilities from the inside, Symyx Technologies Inc. is spinning off a therapeutics group.

Symyx Therapeutics Inc., formed to deploy its parent's existing technologies in a drug discovery and development capacity, received $8 million in funding right from the start. The Sprout Group led the Series A round, with 5am Ventures participating as well. The venture capital firms, both of which have offices in Menlo Park, Calif., gained a majority interest in the spin-off through their investment while Symyx Technologies retained the balance.

"We had identified some applications for our technologies that fell into therapeutics," Jeryl Hilleman, chief financial officer at Symyx Technologies, told BioWorld Today. "The mission and purpose of Symyx is to do high-throughput discovery of materials, so we felt this would be the best way to build value with this technology while giving it the proper resources and focus."

She labeled Symyx Technologies' internal drug development efforts to date as limited to researching its opportunity in creating the therapeutics business. But among its technologies, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company sells instrumentation to pharmaceutical customers for use in their preclinical work.

Symyx Technologies exclusively licensed undisclosed technology rights to Symyx Therapeutics, which at present employs no one. The parent company will contribute its lab facilities on a contract basis to provide research services at direct cost over an initial 18 months - the duration pegged for the initial venture funding, Hilleman said.

"[The funding] is going to be used to support research activities," she added.

Hilleman declined to detail the direction of drug discovery efforts at Symyx Therapeutics, also based in Santa Clara.

Symyx Technologies provides research services, applying high-speed combinatorial technologies to the discovery of materials for life science, chemical and electronics applications; licenses discovered materials and patents; and sells instruments and software.

Its shares (NASDAQ:SMMX) gained 19 cents Friday to close at $15.63.