NEW YORK, Nov 13 - SC Biosciences, a subsidiary of Japan’s $103 billion trading giant Sumitomo, has penned a deal to explore market opportunities for Viaken’s informatics products and services in Japan, the companies announced Monday.
Under the agreement, SC Biosciences will offer the Viaken Informatics Environment, a customized informatics hosting platform, to Japanese life sciences companies. SC will also offer Viaken’s business-to-business life sciences e-commerce platform.
" As the third largest biopharmaceutical market in the world, Japan presents a key strategic market for Viaken and a market where bioinformatics is a leading key to success," Viaken CEO Keith Elliston said in a statement." This partnership with SCB will enable us to serve this market more quickly and efficiently, and will provide Japanese scientists with early access to leading-edge research informatics solutions through our hosted outsourcing model," he added.
Viaken currently provides application hosting for Spotfire and InforMax, as well as the Sanger Center and the European Bioinformatics Institute’s Ensembl system. The privately held company also provides e-commerce solutions for Hewlett-Packard’s life sciences division.
“This partnership with Viaken enables us to offer leading-edge bioinformatics solutions through a hosted outsourcing model,” said SC Biosciences CEO Toru Umehara in a statement. “This relationship is also an important milestone toward SCB's goal to become the ‘one-stop shop’ in the Japanese life science market."