IT's Future In BiotechnologyIT's Future In Biotechnology

The study of the human genome has impacted the IT industry as much as it's impacted the biotechnology or pharmaceutical industries. As scientists look harder at the structure of DNA contained in human cells, data about the nature and cause of diseases grows exponentially.

Successful pharmaceutical companies, for example, will distinguish themselves by their lead optimization platforms, which help them identify which drugs to bring to market and are powered by their IT systems, says Jeffrey Augen, IBM Life Sciences director of strategy. IT vendors and Wall Street analysts discussed IT's future in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries Wednesday at the BioSilico 2002 conference in New York.

"The main challenge for IT in the post-genomic era is defining the ultimate bioinformatics infrastructure for drug discovery," says Siamak Zadeh, group manager with Sun Microsystems' life-science group. This environment includes some combination of computing power, storage, collaborative grid computing, and real-time access to data. For the scientist, the ideal setup is a secure Web-based portal that accesses data from a variety of sources, regardless where the data is located, Zadeh says.

Biotechnology companies can't ignore the biology and IT aspects of their businesses in favor of spending money on chemicals research and marketing, says Douglas Lind, an executive director with Morgan Stanley. "Biological research provides the data these companies trade in, and IT provides the means to increase productivity while cutting costs."