CyberChemics Inc. founder presents two papers at ICANNGA.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(BW HealthWire)--April 1, 1997--CyberChemics Inc. (CCI) Tuesday announced the participation of scientists from the company, including one of its founders, Dr. David Noever, at the International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms (ICANNGA), a biannual meeting of the computational optimization community, April 2-4, at Norwich University (Norwich, UK).

Noever is presenting two papers in plenary sessions on Wednesday morning, April 2 and Friday afternoon, April 4. These papers discuss different aspects of parallel optimization for drug discovery and high-throughput identification of lead compounds using computational methods. CCI scientists are using a proprietary drug discovery technology to rapidly identify and improve new drugs.

This year's papers feature work on methods which scale up towards considering many billions of compounds with antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties.

"We are pleased to be presenting again at ICANNGA on our latest computational discovery methods," said Andrew Brittain, Ph.D., president of CCI.

"Our work on HIV protease inhibitors was a prominent feature at the last ICANNGA conference in Montpellier, France in 1995, and we have taken our discovery method into the laboratory for multiple indications since then.

"This year's ICANNGA presentations highlight how the triad of new drug discovery technologies -- combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening and computational intelligence -- will demand the best algorithms to select only those compounds with favorable therapeutic profiles.

"We increasingly see next-generation drug discovery as a challenge to those companies lacking computing sophistication -- otherwise the full potential of a new drug lead will simply be missed by trial-and-error discovery methods."

CCI employs powerful computer methods for identifying active treatments using its in virtuo screening, which takes the traditional in vitro and in vivo models of drug discovery into a more highly flexible and scalable technology. The increasing demands of such large sequencing projects as the Human Genome Project makes any new technology appealing only if it can move rapidly from a few hundred to perhaps as many as multibillion numbers of compounds.

Since the computer can pinpoint the essential chemical features underlying potent therapeutics, CCI's methods can address potentially large markets with unmet clinical needs.

CCI is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of computational drug discovery technologies for the rapid and parallel identification, synthesis and testing of therapeutics for infectious diseases.

The company has placed primary emphasis on the accelerated development of its computational in virtuo screening methods for multiple indications. CCI has headquarters in Huntsville, with laboratories at SUNY Stonybrook, New York.

CONTACT: CyberChemics Inc., Huntsville

Andrew Brittain, 205/881-8805, fax: [phone]

[e-mail]

or

BioScience Ventures, Inc.

David Palella, 619/793-0741, fax: [phone]

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