Quinternet tools have a particular emphasis on market researcher applications. We have hard clinical data on the progression of disease in individuals. And McKesson, with its sizable investment in PharSight, also has a strong interest in mining patient and pharmacy records. We'll probably be putting together some joint business activities in that space. Saeid Akhtari, PharSight vice president of Corporate Marketing and Strategic Development, sees broad synergies in the databases controlled by these three companies, with PharSight's strength in clinical development data, McKesson in Phase IV data, and Quintiles in marketing information.
People are interested in looking at all three.
That's where I see the synergy. With PharSight moving toward a broader offering of information on patient variability and how it may affect clinical trials, it makes sense to ask if the company is interested in collecting pharmacogenomic information through genetic polymorphisms. A classic example is the fact that African-Americans don't respond to ACE inhibitors. That's clearly a genetic influence, but not one that has been linked to any gene we know. So in a sense, we don't care whether the covariant is a single nucleotide polymorphism or something easily observable.