By Lisa Seachrist

Washington Editor

Tripos Inc. signed a three-year multi-million dollar deal with Parke-Davis, a division of Warner-Lambert Co., to develop custom informatics to enhance the effectiveness of high-throughput screening.

The collaboration will focus on developing integrative analysis software capable of helping Parke-Davis researchers identify compounds that are more likely to make it from the discovery stage through clinical testing and onto the market.

"This deal is primarily focused on developing software to analyze the huge volume of data generated by high-throughput screening," said Trevor Heritage, vice president of software research and development at St. Louis-based Tripos. "The goal is to develop a knowledge-based solution for more effective lead identification from high-throughput screening data."

The exact financial details of the agreement weren't disclosed, but Heritage confirmed it is the biggest deal of its sort to date for Tripos. There are no milestone payments or royalties as part of this collaboration. Under the terms of the three-year deal, the two companies will jointly design, develop and test a wide range of methodologies and software tools for the analysis, interpretation and follow-up of high-throughput data.

In the end, the software tool will be available to every Parke-Davis scientist at all of the company's locations.

"There is a lot of variability in the data that results from high-throughput screening," Heritage said. "We are working to find a way for scientists to handle the variability in the data."

The research tools Tripos will develop in collaboration with Parke-Davis will be designed to allow the validation of high-throughput screening data, the visualization of structure-function relationships and a prioritization protocol for hit follow-up. The software also will provide an assessment of patent viability and a potential side-effect profile for any positive hits.

"By integrating these various pools of information, we hope to increase the likelihood that a compound will survive through the clinic," Heritage said. "The problem with high-throughput screening data isn't in getting a hit; the problem is picking the ones most likely to make it in the clinical setting."

Tripos specializes in providing discovery research software and services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other life sciences companies. Much of the company's software efforts have been "shrink-wrapped" packages for purchase, Heritage said.

"What we've tried to do with this deal and a few others is to become closer to the customer," Heritage said. "We are focusing on building custom solutions to problems."

In addition to software tools, Tripos also provides contract research services for the discovery, synthesis and characterization of new chemical compounds.

Tripos' stock (NASDAQ:TRPS) closed Wednesday at $15, up $1.312.