Subject: search the world's largest chemical database!

From: [email-masked] (Malcolm Cline)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 16:44:14 GMT

Tripos, Inc. and Silicon Graphics recently announced a record-making event--
SpaceCrunch.  The joint project demonstrates how the union of high-performance
scaleable supercomputing and leading edge chemical database technology can
fundamentally change the drug discovery process.  The SpaceCrunch project
involves creating a structural database containing over 100 billion
compounds, and provides capabilities to search and manipulate the database at
rates above 100 million compounds per hour per CPU.

The technology for building and searching the database comes from Tripos'
ChemSpace(TM), a patented methodology for the creation and management 
of chemical
databases. The power to build and search the database is provided by the
scalable computing power of Silicon Graphics computer systems. The SpaceCrunch
project is running on a POWER CHALLENGE at the Silicon Graphics Supercomputing
Technology Center in Cortaillod, Switzerland.

What does this mean to you?  Anyone with an internet browser can participate
in SpaceCrunch, although Java is needed for full interactive capability.
During the next two months, you can access SpaceCrunch through
URL http://spacecrunch.sgi.ch or URL http://www.tripos.com/spacecrunch.

The event will consist of two phases, during the initial period (October
28 to November 11) visitors may
find out more about the project and may propose molecular structure queries to
be applied to the full database. The second phase,  in early December,
will be a live event in which
visitors will interactively examine and explore the results of queries that
were selected for running against the database.

You can participate in the world's first public applications of this
groundbreaking new technology.

Combinatorial Chemistry and High Throughput Screening are new disciplines
in which large chemical compound libraries are designed, created and tested for
desired biological activity.  The one-by-one screening method used currently is
being replaced by these new technologies.  The design and evaluation process
of
library building has been performed up until now on a small scale. Now,
ChemSpace and Silicon Graphics Technology brings innovation to this process by
enabling the creation and searching of vast libraries containing billions of
chemical compounds stemming from specific reactions and reagents.

ChemSpace is unique in enabling both the construction of massive medicinal
databases and the ability to search them for specified similarity or chemical
substructures.  The ChemSpace technology is scalable across the entire Silicon
Graphics line of products, from the entry-level Indy desktop workstation to the
top-of-the-line POWER CHALLENGEarray as well as on the recently announced
product line extending from the O2 desktop solution, through ORIGIN200 and up
to the ORIGIN2000 scalable solutions.

Visit the web sites to learn more about ChemSpace and Silicon Graphics
technology and to submit a query to be one of those possibly selected to run
against the SpaceCrunch database.

Contact Mark Schwartz of Tripos (314-647-1099, [email-masked]) or
Heidi Taylor of Silicon Graphics (+44 1734 257500, [email-masked])
for additional information.

mac
Malcolm A Cline
Tripos WebMaster