Try before you buy
Recently, a small pharmaceutical company took up this option with CDS. They had their own computational chemistry group and their own field based software that they used for virtual screening, docking and other tasks. Cresset software was of interest to them, but they weren’t going to buy it without trying it and they couldn’t spare the people to carry out a full evaluation. So they commissioned a trial project with CDS.
The computational group prepared a protein-ligand binding interaction and asked CDS to run a virtual screen on it. Rather than just go ahead and run the screen, the first step for us was to check the preparatory work. Based on this, we were able to suggest that they optimize the conformation slightly based on evidence from crystallography. This helped to refine the search, which maximized the success of the screen.
After reviewing the results they bought Blaze for virtual screening, plus remote access to our server, enabling them to use Blaze Cloud for remote virtual screens.
Outsource an on-site evaluation
Another company that didn’t have time to evaluate software themselves also wanted us to do a services evaluation project. However, in this case they didn’t want their discovery data to leave their site. As a result, CDS arranged for one of our consultants to carry out the work at the customer site.
Again, the customer was very happy with the results and actually went on to buy the full range of Cresset software to use in-house.