Accelrys, a scientific enterprise R&D software and services company based in San Diego, has purchased the web-based Hit Explorer Operating System (HEOS) from Scynexis, a drug discovery and development company.

The HEOS purchase is the final phase of a strategic agreement that began in 2011, which enabled Accelrys to market and sell HEOS as a key offering within Accelrys' market-leading Cheminformatics Suite of software applications. HEOS enables more efficient and streamlined drug discovery collaborations, particularly for organizations leveraging academic departments, research institutes and CROs in externalized R&D projects.

Enabled by Accelrys applications, HEOS is a proven Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workspace that accelerates and streamlines collaborative drug discovery by providing secure, real-time access to chemical registration, biological assay results, computational and visual analytics, safety assessment and pharmacokinetics data and other project information in the Cloud with minimal IT overhead and effort.

"HEOS supports an important new operating model for collaborating organizations that require secure, flexible information management and collaboration with global reach," said Max Carnecchia, CEO and president of Accelrys. "As many of our customers move to multi-site, multi-collaborator projects to accelerate innovation and reduce costs, we look forward to broadening the applicability and reach of HEOS as a secure, easy-to-use, Cloud-based information management workspace for the wider scientific community."

HEOS has already securely captured hundreds of thousands of compounds and millions of assay test results in a broad range of global pharmaceutical and biotechnology programs ranging from early discovery to preclinical projects. A worldwide network of organizations is currently using the system to capture, consolidate and harmonize data used in the study of neglected diseases.

Accelrys' purchase of the HEOS SaaS-based system includes software and supporting personnel.