Oracle beefs up its life sciences push

Database company Oracle Corp is enhancing life sciences-oriented data mining and data analysis features in upcoming versions of its flagship database product.

The improvements include more powerful algorithms to support commonly-used genomic database search tools such as BLAST, according to Oracle's North American vice-president for life sciences, Jon Simmons.

Its current Oracle 9i application server software supports five data mining algorithms which are useful for identifying biomarkers and phenotypes likely to respond to a particular drug, according to the company.

To keep abreast of what life science companies are looking for, Oracle has assembled a customer advisory board on which 49 life sciences organisations are represented along with some academic institutions Simmons said.

Oracle claims its databases hold an 85 per cent market share among drug discovery companies. It also claims 45 per cent of companies conducting clinical trials run Oracle databases and 65 per cent of all life sciences business use them.

Those figures are partly due to Oracle's dominant position in the business database market. However, the expanding economic importance of biotech is encouraging Oracle to add more life science-specific features to its core database technology.

This year Oracle has focused on life sciences as one of three high priority sectors (the other two are high-tech manufacturing and the public sector).

The company's products are used by all major pharmaceuticals, most of the leading biotechs and the majority of the large genomic database sites, Simmons told Australian Biotechnology News.

"We are the only company that has a product across the whole value chain - research, clinical, financial, manufacturing and customer relationship management,'" he said.

Its database technology forms a common denominator between different aspects of a typical biobusiness, from drug research to business applications.

Such pervasiveness is a valuable asset for life science companies which are labouring to link the islands of information growing within their organisations, Simmons argues.