Company recruits biologists with IT backgrounds MARSEILLE, FRANCE – Netino SARL sees a bright future for outsourcing in drug discovery: The 2-year-old company just landed a 10-year contract to handle the bioinformatics activities of a major French pharmaceutical company.The move will push Netino to recruit another 35 biologists with an IT background before January, according to Kheira Sissaoui, a neuroinformatics consultant with the company, based in Puteaux, France. Netino currently employs 15 people, she said, speaking at the 8th European Biotechnology Crossroads conference and exhibition in Marseille, France, on Friday.Netino’s consultants typically work on the premises of clients such as Aventis SA or BioMérieux, building and using software tools to analyze data generated by the clients’ experiments. However, the company also performs the work on its own premises for companies willing to transport data off their premises and outsource the work elsewhere. That’s the case for the new contract, for which Netino will build a new IT lab, said Sissaoui, who declined to name the company. Several foreign companies have already called on Netino’s services — and more may do so in the future: visitors to the show from Spain, China and Canada have expressed a strong interest, she said.Most of the work is done on Linux-based systems, which helps keep costs down, Sissaoui said. The company also developed its own, patented, software tool for conducting in-silico screening of promoters. The tool was originally developed for the screening of biopesticide molecules. “In vivo, it takes a long time,” she said. “With this software, you gain 7 to 10 months.” Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry