Bill Gates has invested $10 million in Schrodinger LLC, a 140-person company in Oregon that makes software to develop new pharmaceuticals. "It's a vision that for decades has eluded a host of
start-ups," writes Robert Guth, but Gates' investment adds his considerable weight to the field of computational chemistry.
"There was a lot of hype around [the field] and rapid
expansion," says Charles Reynolds, senior director at Ansaris, a company that emerged from another one that collapsed when the biotech bubble burst a decade ago. "Some of those expectations were not
probably really reasonable."
Schrodinger's software currently can winnow down a field of 10 million compounds to the 100 that will most likely work, according to executives at the
company. The challenge, says president Ramy Farid, is to build software that will more accurately predict which compounds will have an affect on a biological agent.
advertisement
advertisement
Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »