Aurora provides its own input

The rap on toolkit companies is that they sell tiny slices of rapidly obsolescing drug discovery technologies to a limited number of partners, making the business model difficult to sustain. But nimbler companies are starting to expand their businesses to become more viable. Last week's deal between Aurora Biosciences Corp. and Warner-Lambert's Parke-Davis division may answer some questions about how ABSC plans to grow once development of its Ultra-High Throughput Screening System is complete.

It has been assumed that ABSC would offer its own UHTSS service once it has delivered the completed system to its pharma customers. While that service business once would have depended on cell-based screens provided by future customers, the Parke-Davis deal represents ABSC's first collaboration using its own cell-based screening technology, which ABSC also will be able to offer for partnership and feed into the UHTSS...