The pharma-to-biotech dealmaking drought, which began in 1999, continues in 2000. Drug companies have been distracted by consolidation and by their focus on later-stage products; biotechs have found funding through the capital markets. Instead, there have been plenty of biotech-to-biotech deals--little cash changes hands, but each partner's technology enables the other to reach later-stages of development, and thus keep a higher proportion of the drug's upside, granted the other has the cash to develop it.

Three scientists who had worked for Chemical Abstracts Service decided to create Columbus Molecular Software when they saw how chemists were being overloaded with data from automated chemical synthesis and screening operations. As with other data mining firms, CMS's idea is to help scientists turn data into useful knowledge.

Companies in the new generation of screening technologies are stressing content as much as they're stressing speed, and one-stop shopping as much as focused expertise.

Understanding what makes one compound a hit or a miss is important in figuring out how to improve a screen. BioReason offers intelligent software on a per client basis by incorporating both specifics about a particular screen and the company's human expertise, to create artificially intelligent programs.