LONDON, April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced that Berg Pharma and BT Global Services will be working together to accelerate the process of drug discovery and development, using resources and technology from both companies. The joint effort will focus on the use of innovative approaches to target identification and validation and on lead optimization of novel drug candidates. It will support the use of cloud-based high throughput molecular profiling techniques to select patients for clinical trials.

Berg Pharma will use the BT for Life Sciences R&D cloud service as the de facto standard for running Berg's unique Interrogative Biology® platform.  BT for Life Sciences R&D, unveiled at the 10th Bio-IT World meeting, is the first cloud service designed to enable collaboration within the life sciences industry for increased R&D productivity.

BT for Life Sciences R&D is being developed to become a secure and segregated platform for scientists in pharmaceutical, biotech, devices & diagnostics companies as well as in academia and government. It will enable Berg Pharma to maximize its late-stage clinical trial activity and continue research and development of early-stage technologies in CNS (central nervous system) and metabolic diseases.

In addition, Berg Pharma will be able to offer major pharmaceutical companies its Interrogative Biology® platform from BT's cloud service in a secure manner, to produce better quality information. This will provide results that can lead to faster IND (Investigational New Drug) filings and to safer and more effective options for clinical trial participants. By running the Interrogative Biology® platform in a secure cloud environment such as BT for Life Sciences R&D, Berg Pharma will also be able to work with major pharmaceutical companies that need faster and more innovative approaches to drug discovery and development.

Niven R. Narain, President & CTO for Berg Pharma, said:  "Berg Pharma's novel approaches to drug discovery and development will integrate well with BT's new cloud services offering. This approach will enable us to gain insight to underlying disease mechanisms and pathophysiology, provide a template for expedient 'proof of principle' IND enabling testing and allow for higher clinical trial success based on much deeper disease understanding.  This will readily create a diversified data ecosystem that represents the narrative of patient populations.  Medicine of the future must be data-driven to address the multifactorial nature of disease onset and allow for astute clinical and economic modelling.  Big data is important but actionable data is invaluable."

Bas Burger, president of Global Commerce for BT Global Services, said: "Pharmaceutical companies are constantly looking for ways to accelerate the process of identification of new pharmaceutical targets and new lead drug candidates as well as moving promising new drug candidates through all phases of clinical trials with a greater degree of confidence. In addition, BT for Life Sciences R&D provides both Berg Pharma and their customers with a cloud platform that allows them to comply with the industry's stringent security, regulatory and compliance requirements."

About Berg Pharma

Berg Pharma is a fully integrated Boston based pharmaceutical company and parent to Berg Biosystems and Berg Diagnostics. Its core focus seeks to understand how alterations in metabolism relate to disease onset by engagement of biointelligence.  With use of the Berg Interrogative Biology® discovery platform, hallmark insight into metabolic control factors and namely into underlying elements in the Warburg Hypothesis have been unraveled. The company has a deep pipeline of early-stage technologies in CNS diseases and metabolic diseases that complement its late-stage clinical trial activity in cancer and prevention of chemotoxicity. Armed with use of the discovery platform that translates biological output into viable therapeutics and a robust biomarker library, Berg Pharma is poised to realize its pursuit of a healthier tomorrow.

About BT

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries.  Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

In the year ended 31 March 2011, BT Group's revenue was 20,076m pounds Sterling with profit before taxation of 1,717m pounds.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. 

For more information, visit www.btplc.com

SOURCE BT