ZS acquires bioinformatics company to expand medicine discovery

ZS announced it has acquired Danish bioinformatics and systems biology company, Intomics. Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, Intomics accelerates and optimises pharmaceutical drug discovery and development by enabling complex analysis of biomedical data.

The addition of renowned scientists to the ZS team will strengthen ZS’s focus on the discovery of new medicines for all.

Global pharmaceutical and biotech companies, along with other biomedical research entities, use Intomics’s service and technology offerings to assist in preclinical work, including target discovery, biomarker identification, drug repositioning and patient stratification. As the pharmaceutical industry intensifies its efforts on developing drugs, demand for innovative capabilities in discovery and disease biology is growing.

Intomics’s highly curated protein-protein interaction network is condition-agnostic and supports tailored biomedical analysis spanning multiple diseases. Scientists and bioinformaticians use the network to understand disease biology at the pathway and molecular level. This drives insights and discoveries and accelerates preclinical activities to ultimately bring new medicines to patients faster.

“Our strategic acquisition of Intomics will allow us to assist our clients in pursuing breakthrough science and innovative medicines that profoundly improve patients’ lives,” said Pratap Khedkar, CEO of ZS. “Combined, our unique mix of deep data, academic and scientific expertise, technology and artificial intelligence will ultimately accelerate drug discovery and improve the probability of success for innovative medicines.”

The 42 members of Intomics will join ZS’s staff of 12,000 employees worldwide and strengthen its team of molecular natives who combine scientific, data science and technology expertise with a research mindset to advance the adoption of in-silico methods in drug discovery. The addition of Intomics expands upon ZS’s existing data and technology offerings to bring further sophistication in leveraging analytics, bioinformatics and applied mathematics to drive business impact for the science of R&D.

“For us, ZS was a natural destination to build on our legacy. Through integration with ZS, we will be able to broaden our impact in drug discovery, increase the scale and use of AI in our client work and operate on a global scale while expanding career opportunities for our team members,” said Thomas S. Jensen, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Intomics. “Our shared roots in academia and shared values, including a commitment to rigor, a deliberative approach and doing right by both our clients and our staff, made ZS a natural fit for us and for our clients,” he continued.