Symyx Technologies was a company specializing in the area of combinatorial chemistry and is now part of Accelrys.
Symyx offers high-speed combinatorial technologies for the discovery of new materials. Using proprietary technologies - including instruments, software and methods - enabled Symyx to generate hundreds to thousands of unique materials at a time and screen those materials rapidly and automatically for desired properties. This approach can deliver results hundreds to thousands of times faster than traditional research methods, at a fraction of the cost.
Symyx is applying this technology to revolutionize materials discovery in the life sciences, chemical, and electronics industries. Founded in 1994 by Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni and Dr. Peter G. Schultz, Symyx' conceptual basis draws from Affymax, Inc. and Affymetrix, Inc., which commercialized the use of high-speed combinatorial methods for pharmaceutical and genetic research, respectively. Symyx screens about a million materials a year and has produced a product pipeline with several materials that have the potential to be commercialized in the next few years. Examples of their discovery efforts include X-ray storage phosphors for radiography, polymers to speed DNA research and catalysts for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, chemicals and plastics.
In 2007 Symyx Technologies acquired MDL Information Systems (originally Molecular Design Limited, Inc.), a provider of R&D informatics in the chemistry and life sciences industries, which had been launched as a computer-aided drug design firm in January 1978 in Hayward, California. With this purchase came the purveyorship of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-NIOSH Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS, www.cdc.gov/niosh/rtecs), a database of basic toxicity information on household chemical substances, food additives, drugs, solvents, biocides, and chemical waste components which as of first quarter of 2012 contained ≈170,000 entries. In 2008, Symyx sold non-RTECS portions of the occupational health and safety (OHS) component of the MDL business to ChemAdvisor, Inc., of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Subsequent innovations derived from these business components included an enterprise electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) capable of supporting multiple scientific disciplines.
In 2010 Symyx merged with Accelrys, with the combined company being known simply as Accelrys.