NEW YORK, Feb 6 – Informax's business strategy entails looking beyond off-the-shelf sales of its software toward developing hands-on collaborations, such as the partnership the company forged with Axcell Biosciences, Informax CEO Alex Titomirov said Tuesday.
“We’d like to have collaborations and technologies that map [bioinformatics] onto development,” Titomirov told GenomeWeb following a media seminar in New York.
Under the terms of the multi-year agreement with Axcell , signed back in September 1999, Informax has designed technology to link AxCell’s database to InforMax's Software Solution for Bio-Medicine, a molecular biology and genetics software. Informax also provided Axcell of Newtown, Pa., with the latest version of its Genomax software, used in identifying protein domains and ligands for protein-protein interaction measurements.
In exchange, Informax, of Rockville, Md., obtained the rights to distribute Axcell’s proteomics database.
Titomirov said that Informax would continue to focus on building market share as a leading bioinformatics player, noting that the company does not have any intention to start identifying drug targets.
“There’s so much data available that it doesn’t make sense to go into data generation,” he said. “Informax’s vision is to be the best knowledge finder.”
Last month, Informax signed a four-year deal with Biomax, of Martinsreid, Germany, to add Biomax’s BioRS data integration and retrieval system to the Informax platform, and to market and distribute the product.
The company also recently announced that it would distribute Media Cybernetics’ Array-Pro Analyzer and Gel-Pro Analyzer software in conjunction with its Genomax and Vector NTI software.
A spokeswoman mentioned that Informax was scheduled to make an announcement at the upcoming Genome Tri Conference, to take place March 3-9 in San Francisco. She did not indicate what the announcement would entail.