Company Relocates and Moves Into a New State-of-the-Art
Facility in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania
BLUE BELL, Pa., July 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Locus Discovery Inc., a new
computational drug design biopharmaceutical company, announced today that the
Company has moved into a newly designed, state-of-the-art facility located at
512 Township Line Road, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.
At this new facility, Locus has assembled what it believes is one of the
fastest parallel processor supercomputer clusters in the world, based on data
from the TFCC (Top 500 Computer Clusters). The Company is using its
supercomputer for proprietary computational drug design work.
Locus Discovery Supercomputer Cluster
Most current supercomputers are comprised of a large number of smaller
processors linked in parallel, a form of distributed computing, rather than
previous approaches that often used a single large centralized processor.
Locus has assembled a Beowulf supercomputer cluster currently comprised of
1,408 1GHz parallel processors. The majority of the processors are 1U, 1 GHz
dual processor, Pentium III units purchased from Western Scientific. The
Locus Discovery cluster has a peak performance of approximately 1.41
TeraFlops. A GigaFlop is a standard unit of computer speed and represents
1 billion calculations per second; a TeraFlop is equivalent to 1,000
GigaFlops, that is, 1 trillion calculations per second. At 1.41 TeraFlops,
the Locus supercluster is capable of conducting over 1.4 trillion calculations
per second, which the Company believes is about 40% faster than the next most
powerful publicly known supercluster.
Locus Discovery also owns an additional supercluster comprised of
658 1 GHz processors operating in another location. Within the next few weeks
the Company will bring these processors to its Blue Bell site, and expand the
total supercluster to 2,066 1 GHz processors. This cluster configuration will
have a peak performance of 2.06 TeraFlops -- over 2 trillion calculations per
second -- or approximately twice that of the next most powerful supercluster
currently listed on the TFCC database.
Superclusters are monitored by the TFCC, an international forum that
promotes cluster computing research and education. It participates in helping
to set up and promote technical standards in this area and to provide a
reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance
computing. To achieve this, the TFCC twice a year assembles a list of the
sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems. The TFCC presents a
list of computer clusters on their website, http://clusters.top500.org.
"As impressive as our computer is, the key to our capabilities are the
novel and proprietary mathematical constructs and computational algorithms
which run on the supercluster. We are committed to developing the best
possible tools to progress our novel work in finding new drugs for a variety
of serious medical disorders. We are proud of the hard work and achievements
of our team in building this supercomputer cluster. This powerful computer is
instrumental to our groundbreaking work in computational drug design, with
which we hope to achieve in weeks what currently takes many years of
painstaking laboratory research," commented Nicholas Landekic, President and
Chief Executive Officer of Locus Discovery.
Move to New Facility
Locus Discovery, growing at a rapid rate, expects to have approximately 50
employees by the end of this year and about 80 by the end of 2002. Within the
next few years, Locus plans to employ well over a hundred people at its new
facility, including chemists, biologists, computer scientists, and business
professionals. The new 50,000 square foot facility can accommodate the
projected employee growth and future requirements for additional laboratory
and supercomputer space.
Locus Discovery's computational technology is a proprietary means of first
rapidly and accurately identifying the biologically relevant active binding
site of a protein, and then designing small molecule antagonists or agonists
of the protein's activity. The technology utilizes proprietary computational
procedures and requires knowledge only of the structure of a protein. Unlike
traditional research approaches, the Locus Discovery process represents the
ability to compress into a few weeks what previously took several years in the
drug discovery process, enabling the identification of small molecule drugs
substantially faster, with a much higher success rate, and on a much larger
scale than has previously been possible.
"The new facility not only allows for continued long-term growth but
significant expansion of our drug discovery efforts. We expect to have 20 drug
discovery programs underway by year's end, which would represent unprecedented
productivity and efficiency in the biopharmaceutical industry," commented
Nicholas Landekic.
Locus Discovery is a new computational drug design biopharmaceutical
company. The Company was organized in September 1999, and is based on
technology exclusively licensed from the Sarnoff Corporation. The Locus
Discovery process can be used to discover therapeutic compounds for many
thousands of known protein targets, as well as thousands of new protein
targets being identified through genomic research. Some of Locus Discovery's
drug discovery programs include small molecule mimetics of erythropoetin,
anti-viral compounds based on a novel target called GP41, and other programs
in cancer, infectious diseases, and neurological and other disorders.
New address for Locus Discovery:
Locus Discovery, Inc.
512 Township Line Rd.
Four Valley Square
Blue Bell, PA 19422
(215) 358-2000
http://www.locusdiscovery.com
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks
and uncertainties that could cause Locus Discovery's actual results and
experience to differ materially from the anticipated results and expectations
expressed in these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on
current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that are subject to risks and
uncertainties which could cause actual outcomes and results to differ
materially from these statements. Among other things, there can be no
assurances that any of Locus Discovery's research programs and compounds will
successfully complete all the pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory,
manufacturing and other steps necessary to develop and commercialize them into
safe and effective new drugs.
SOURCE Locus Discovery Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.locusdiscovery.com
http://clusters.top500.org
CONTACT:
Nicholas Landekic of Locus Discovery Inc.,
+1-215-358-2002; or Brad Miles, media, +1-212-477-9007, ext. 17,
or Jonathan Fassberg, investor, +1-212-477-9007, ext. 16, both of
BMC Comm., The Trout Group, for Locus Discovery Inc.
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