INDUSTRY

BOCA RATON, FL -- An important initiative in the ongoing battle against cancer was announced today. Sengent Inc., a leading provider of technology that allows organizations to unify Web services via the Service Grid, today announced that it has been chosen by the Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases, a non-profit research organization, to power the institute's current and ongoing scientific research to find a cure for tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC). Based on the technology behind Sengent's first initiative for life sciences, the Drug Design and Optimization Lab (D2OL), every company and household across the globe will be able to contribute to the search for a cure for TSC by simply downloading the non-intrusive software application at www.childhooddiseases.org. Sengent's Drug Design and Optimization Lab (D2OL), was successfully deployed in 2001 to combat the threat of biological weapons through a worldwide volunteer community. More than 25,000 users downloaded Sengent's CommunityOS software application, which enabled them to contribute the idle time available on their computers to participate in the drug discovery efforts of the nation's scientific research community. This project experienced resounding success and has taken a life of its own. Sengent is currently in discussions with groups interested in taking it over as sponsors. "Based on the overwhelming success of the D2OL project, we chose Sengent's technology to power our research efforts to find a cure for TSC. The unique software framework has proven to be a reliable and cost-effective technology that will essentially act as a partner for our research scientists in discovering cures," said Jonathan Rothberg, Ph.D., of the Rothberg Institute, who views this project as an important tool to better understand all cancers. "By utilizing Sengent's CommunityTSC product, we're able to give our researchers the high-performance compute power they need to do their work, in addition to providing them with the ability to manage the computing resources easily and efficiently." The CommunityOS software framework leverages grid technology to locate idle computing resources and services, and organize them into a Service Grid. Sengent's framework represents a quick and efficient path to integrate new and existing Web-based applications with legacy systems regardless of platform or development language. A security model is woven throughout the entire framework that provides enterprise-strength authentication and authorization capabilities while localizing policy management and streamlining system administration. "As the computer world moves towards a service-centric model, computing power becomes the least of the issues," said Doug Nassaur, chief operating officer of Sengent. "Managing the complexities of distributed resources, including security and reliability, is the limiting factor and is the target of CommunityOS. We're proud of our early success with D2OL and the advantages it will bring to the critical work being undertaken by the Rothberg Institute." The premier scientists involved in the TSC project are sponsored by the TS Alliance Rothberg Courage Award and include researchers at Yale, Harvard and Fox Chase Cancer Research Center. The researchers will utilize Sengent's CommunityTSC technology to discover potential inhibitors of biological targets, which will be the basis for break through drugs for TSC and Cancer. For more information visit www.childhooddiseases.org or www.sengent.com