Symyx Draw 3.1 Delivers Improved Functionality For Chemists

Symyx Technologies, Inc. recently announced the release of Symyx Draw 3.1, a software package for drawing chemical structures and querying for searching, registration, and collaboration. Symyx Draw 3.1 is a direct replacement for ISIS/Draw in the ISIS informatics system and a component of the Symyx Isentris informatics system that replaces ISIS. Scientists can transition from industry-leading ISIS/Draw to Symyx Draw 3.1 with minimal effort while also gaining significant enhancements for rapidly drawing chemical structures and chemically intelligent queries.

"Symyx Draw 3.1 improves scientists' ability to capture and share complex molecules and chemical reactions with unprecedented ease," said Dr. Trevor Heritage, President of Symyx Software. "New and improved functionality includes additional support for polymers and mixtures with all Sgroup types supported, Rgroup or Markush queries, 3D queries, name-to-structure and structure-to-name conversions, and an ever-increasing number of useful, no-charge add-ins. These enhancements make Symyx Draw 3.1 the leading drawing package available to chemists today."

New features in Symyx Draw 3.1 support quick and efficient structure drawing and faster workflows across a range of scientific disciplines by enabling scientists to:

• Utilize built-in structure-to-name and name-to-structure converters --Rapidly correlate drawn chemical structures with IUPAC, canonical SMILES using OpenEye's Lexichem technology, InChI, and NEMA chemical identifiers; a capability not provided by ISIS/Draw
• Create and edit polymers, mixtures, and formulations with full Data Sgroup support --Capture all the enterprise's chemical intelligence from small molecules to biomolecules, polymers, mixtures, and formulations
• Create and edit Markush (Rgroup) queries -- Create powerful and precise substructure queries, retrieving molecules that contain a common core structure but have different functional groups at specific sites
• Create and edit 3D queries -- Build and visualize 3D chemical structure queries; search for pharmacophores in Symyx's 3D databases

New enhancements for the support of biomolecules make Symyx Draw 3.1 more customizable, extensible, and efficient than ISIS/Draw for scientists engaged in biologics research who need to create, register, and search chemically modified 1-and 3-letter peptide or nucleotide sequences.

For scientists moving from ISIS/Draw, Symyx Draw 3.1 looks and feels the same. However, Symyx Draw 3.1 is easier to use than ISIS/Draw by virtue of its all-purpose drawing tool, user-friendly toolbar functionalities, scientific symbol chooser, large library of protecting group templates, and other usability enhancements. Symyx Draw 3.1 is also superior to ISIS/Draw in supporting enhanced stereochemical perception and in offering a growing number of no-charge add-ins that can be tailored to the needs of individual scientists (including molecular property calculation/prediction, enumeration, bioavailability, calculate-as-you-draw, and isotopomer distribution tools). In addition, the rich presentation- and publication-quality graphics of Symyx Draw 3.1 surpass those of ISIS/Draw.

The application's flexibility and configurability enable developers to create customized drawing, rendering, editing, and structure display capabilities, both standalone and embedded in other .NET or Java applications, to meet specific workflow requirements. Symyx Draw 3.1 is available now. Take advantage of special, discounted pricing available through the end of 2008. For more information, visit www.symyx.com/draw31 or contact inforequest@symyx.com.

About Symyx
Symyx Technologies, Inc. is the scientific R&D integration partner to companies in the life sciences, chemicals, energy, electronics and consumer products industries. With scientific R&D under tremendous economic and technical pressure, we help companies reduce R&D risk and enhance R&D productivity to help them bring more and better products to market quickly and cost-effectively. Our integrated technology platform combines electronic laboratory notebooks, content, laboratory logistics and analysis available from Symyx Software, software-driven integrated workflows available from Symyx Tools and collaborative research and directed services from Symyx Research Services to support the entire R&D process. In October 2007, Symyx acquired MDL Information Systems, Inc., a leading provider of innovative informatics software, databases and services that accelerate successful scientific R&D by improving the speed and quality of scientists' decision making. Information about Symyx, including reports and other information filed by Symyx with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is available at www.symyx.com.

SOURCE: Symyx Technologies, Inc.