Commonwealth in genomics pact with bayMountain

Commonwealth Biotechnologies, a US contract research organization, andbayMountain, which claims to be a leader in complex web and application infrastructure services, have signed a letter of intent to develop and commercialize "rapid, user-friendly methods to help interpret and mine the data present in genome databases." The companies said that they see an opportunity to combine state-of-the-art computer bioinformatic analyses with DNA sequence determination and protein structure determination.

Commonwealth noted that it considers itself a leader in the area of comparative genomics, based on its "unique bioinformatic approaches" and anticipates that expansion of its computing capabilities in this area, with bayMountain's input, will help expand its client base. Analysts predict significant growth for servers, storage and related IT services in the bioscience market, with some forecasts indicating that this market will grow from less than $2.5 billion in 2000 to nearly $12 billion by 2004.

Robert Harris, Commonwealth's president, said that "this is an outstanding opportunity for us to partner with a company whose expertise is in hosting, managing and analyzing very complex and data-intensive applications." He added that by focusing on relatively small genomes, such as pathogenic bacteria, "we see a rapid commercialization of new and powerful software."