TRIPOS BUILDS AN INFO-SCAFFOLD

IT TURNS OUT THAT CHEMISTRY IS a cottage industry in Cornwall," says John P. McAlister III, chief executive officer of Tripos. Gazing from the atrium window at the firm's drug discovery research center in Bude, England, McAlister explains that chemists from Maybridge Chemical, down the road inTintagel, have for decades been bitten by "the entrepreneurial bug" and left to start small chemistry companies in the area. Tripos purchased one such company, called Receptor Research, in 1997 With the completion last year of a $25 million expansion, Tripos Discovery Research (TDR) now rises well above the local cottage operations, adding a research chemistry wing to St. Louis-based Tripos' original business in computational chemistry software and informatics. Drug research software companies frequently link up with chemistry-based discovery operations, but the link is often tenuous. Tripos' close competitor Accelrys, or example, recently spun off its drug discovery business, Pharmacopeia Drug Discovery. In 2002 ...