COMMENTS

Index

• MDL & Tripos Deal

MDL INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC. AND TRIPOS, INC. TO PROVIDE SOLUTIONS FOR PHARMACEUTICAL AND CHEMICAL RESEARCHERS

It is really great the MDL and Tripos are getting together to further their economic interest and to supply the chemical industry with a needed facility to better face the information explosion.

However I can't help but offer a word or criticism/ constructive commentary. Tripos and MDL should offer academic institutions their products (or useful scaled versions) for less money. With the support of academia, these companies would enjoy more marketability once the academic product realizes he/she can not do without structure searchable databases and/or literature searches based on conformation. In this way the MDL market acquires more expandability and never reaches saturation kinetics because they are selling to the same old faces.

Quite a few good people come from smaller colleges and enter the pharmaceutical market. There certainly is a needy academic market and there must be a happy medium between the astronomical prices for the MDL databases/Isis front end, and a lesser fee for some hypothetical scaled version. I would he happy to help develop or help in the scaling and marketing of an hypothetical academic product (home office product).

Suggestions:

• 1. Scale the database to something large pharm firm would not use due to the risk of missing something crucial.
• 2. Offer academia a triannual update of the database instead of an annual update.
• 3. Offer academia a useful package with diminished capabilities. Your aim is to get the students hooked and make a little more money initially with the promise of greater marketability.

Arthur Cammers-Goodwin
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
606-257-7076