The details of the deal will see SciTegic shareholders will receive $12.25 million in cash and approximately 1,040,119 shares of Accelrys common stock in exchange for their Scitegic shares at closing.
Mark Emkjer, Accelrys' chief executive officer said: "We believe the merger of these two market-leading companies will enable significant advancements in the scientific software market."
"The addition of SciTegic's innovative workflow technology, Pipeline Pilot, to Accelrys' portfolio will provide customers with superior software solutions."
Pipeline Pilot is a Scitegic's flagship product combining high-throughput data analysis and mining system for drug discovery informatics. The technology allows a user to define and perform a complex series of operations on extremely large data sets in real time.
Accelrys move makes sense on a strategic level. According to predictions by market researchers Kalorama the use of computational tools for drug design is set to increase. Computational tools are becoming more adept to predicting properties that influence drug design.
Scientists are now recognising how information systems can increase their productivity. A lot more thought is being put into which compounds are selected. Advanced computational techniques, guided by input from medicinal chemists, are being applied prior to synthesis.