General Dynamics and Array Biopharma to Develop Software to Improve Management of Drug Discovery Process

PITTSBURGH — Dec. 19, 2005 — General Dynamics C4 Systems and Array BioPharma today announced the companies will work together to develop a real-time, collaborative decision-support software application called CoMotion Discovery™ to improve management of the costly, time-consuming drug discovery process implemented by pharmaceutical companies around the world.

Drug discovery, the research process for the identification and development of new pharmaceutical drugs, is often a lengthy and expensive initiative with years of effort focused on producing a success. Using CoMotion Discovery, scientists will be able to mine existing operational databases and see, explore and evaluate detailed information about individual projects and aggregate information across the entire pipeline.

Using CoMotion Discovery software, scientists will be able to examine hard data, such as timelines, assay results and molecular structures, as well as qualitative information such as drug discovery team members’ personal observations, assumptions and plans about current and past endeavors.

”CoMotion Discovery helps team members get inside each others’ heads, thereby increasing individual and group effectiveness,” said Mike Capsambelis, product management director for Viz, the Pittsburgh-based business area of General Dynamics C4 Systems.

Armed with real-time awareness software, scientists may be able to more rapidly identify promising drug candidates — as well as those that do not meet project criteria — and maximize the potential return on investment from resources applied to a given discovery effort. They will also be able to more quickly access information to determine which drugs should be nominated for preclinical studies, speeding the examination of potentially beneficial drugs.

CoMotion Discovery is being built on General Dynamics’ CoMotion® software which has proven to be an effective collaboration tool for users inside and outside of the life sciences industry. In September 2005, General Dynamics won Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) national Award for Sustained Excellence for the innovative Command Post of the Future (CPOF), a battle management system based on CoMotion Technology, the platform that will power the CoMotion Discovery application.

“We’re very impressed with the CoMotion technology and the impact it had on other industries,” said James P. Rizzi, Ph.D., Director of Computation Technology, Array BioPharma. “We look forward to collaborating with General Dynamics to adapt this powerful software to the drug discovery process.”

General Dynamics C4 Systems is a business unit of General Dynamics. Its Pittsburgh-based operation, Viz, is a leader in visual decision support solutions. The business specializes in group decision-making through a unique information design process coupled with collaborative visualization technology. Companies with experience using Viz decision-support software cover the life sciences, healthcare, defense and transportation markets including the University of California Cancer Center, CombineNet, the US Army, US Transportation Command, DARPA and Shell Oil.