"Life sciences is one of the emerging markets at the heart of IBM's growth strategy," said John M. Thompson, IBM senior vice president & group executive, Software. "This investment is the first of a number of steps we will be taking to advance IBM's life sciences initiatives." In his role as newly appointed IBM Corporation vice chairman, effective September 1, Mr. Thompson will be responsible for integrating and accelerating IBM's efforts to exploit life sciences and other emerging growth areas.

IBM estimates the market for IT solutions for life sciences will skyrocket from $3.5 billion today to more than $9 billion by 2003. Driving demand is the explosive growth in genomic, proteomic and pharmaceutical research. For example, the Human Genome Database is approximately three terabytes of data, or the equivalent of 150 million pages of information. The volume of life sciences data is doubling every six months. 

"All of this genetic data is worthless without the information technology that can help scientists manage and analyze it to unlock the pathways that will lead to new cures for many of today's diseases," said Dr. Caroline Kovac, vice president of IBM's new Life Sciences unit. "IBM can help speed this process by enabling more efficient interpretation of data and sharing of knowledge. The potential for change based on innovation in life sciences is bigger than the change caused by the digital circuit."

Among the life sciences initiatives already underway at IBM are:
- DiscoveryLink* -- For the first time, researchers using this combination of innovative middleware and integration services can join together information from many sources to solve complex medical research problems. DiscoveryLink creates a "virtual database" that permits data to be accessed and extracted from multiple data sources used in research and development projects. This IT solution can dramatically improve product cycle time and lower development costs for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agri-science companies. 

- Blue Gene* - IBM is building a supercomputer 100 times faster than any available today designed to advance understanding of the mechanisms behind protein folding through large-scale biomolecular simulation. In December, IBM committed $100 million to this five-year research project to advance the state-of-the-art in supercomputing for biological applications.
- Bio-Dictionary* -- IBM has compiled a protein dictionary containing some 30 million protein "words" designed to accelerate the understanding of protein shapes and functions.Bio-Dictionaries for selected genomes, as well as bioinformatics algorithms for pattern discovery and other relevant applications, are available to scientists and researchers for noncommercial use through a website dedicated to life sciences content at http://www.research.ibm.com/compsci/compbio/.

* Indicates trademark or registered trademark of IBM Corporation.