St. Augustin and Erlangen, Germany – October 6, 2004 – BioSolveIT GmbH and Molecular Networks GmbH today announced that they have been awarded a threeyear development grant from the BMBF, through its BioChance+ programme. With the NovoBench project, the German ministry supports the development of a new technology platform for de novo design of lead compounds with high propensity of being biologically active and synthetically feasible. The heart of this platform is an integrated collection of virtual screening tools that facilitate in silico synthesis of chemical fragments optimized towards certain target-dependent properties.