Decoding crystallization

Practitioners of X-ray crystallography have long grumbled about the time-consuming, brute force process of growing protein crystals. The advent of high throughput technologies like robotic liquid handlers has helped speed up the process of screening different solutions in which a protein can be crystallized. But there is room for improvement, which is giving deCode Genetics Inc. an opportunity to monetize last year's acquisition of MediChem Life Sciences Inc.

deCode (NASD-EU:DCGN; DCGN, Reykjavik, Iceland) acquired the medicinal chemistry company for $49 million as part of a strategy to integrate down the value chain (see BioCentury, Feb. 4, 2002).But the company's biostructures group has continued to develop ways for making MediChem's crystallization technology more efficient. ...