6 opInIon
Global centralisation: accelerates
decisions in early drug discovery
he global pharmaceutical industry is of-the-art facilities spanning eight countries.
Roger Clark, Senior
projected to grow to approximately A UK-based AstraZeneca team began
Scientist, CIRA Bioscience
US$1.3 trillion by 2020. A recent exploring the idea of centralising its biochemical
at AstraZeneca and Trish T report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers screening operations to service (at that time)
Meek, Life Sciences
indicates that the current pharmaceutical over 50 AstraZeneca bioscientists and chemists
Strategist at Thermo
industry business model is both economically operating in R&D centres spread over four of
Fisher Scientific, discuss
unsustainable and operationally incapable of those countries.
how global centralisation
acting quickly enough to produce the types The Biochemical Screening Team (BST) at
can accelerate decision-
making in early drug
of innovative treatments demanded by global AstraZeneca forms part of the Assay Sciences
discovery.
markets. Group, which encompasses biochemical and
In order to take full advantage of the future cellular aspects of drug discovery projects. The
growth opportunities, the industry must team processes approximately 12 000 samples
Roger Clark, maître fundamentally change the way it operates. per month, originating on a daily basis from
de recherches au sein
Centralisation helps establish common more than 80 internal customers globally. This
du département CIRA
processes and evaluation standards across a requires assays to be run against 20–30 different
Bioscience d’AstraZeneca,
company’s global operations, facilitating optimum biochemical targets every week.
et Trish Meek, spécialiste
en stratégie des sciences
performance and productivity. Integration of
systems and procedures dramatically enhances
The case for centralisation
de la vie chez Thermo
Fisher Scientific, discutent
collaboration and increases information sharing Biochemical screening requests have been
de la façon dont la
and learning. Ultimately, this results in the traditionally recorded, tracked and managed
centralisation mondiale ability to drive efficiencies, connect better with at the local laboratory level. One person would
peut accélérer la prise customers and make more informed decisions manually order and test samples, then follow
de décisions dans la
faster, thus delivering high-quality products and these through to results, leading to an insufficient
découverte précoce de
services across the world. productivity of 2.5 assays per scientist.
médicaments.
Clinical trials and discovery processes are AstraZeneca identified that its decentralised,
streamlined and collaboration is improved, inefficient and manual process of biochemical
Roger Clark, leitender
allowing scientists to bridge the gap between screening could be improved. The company
Wissenschaftler bei
research, discovery and drug delivery. Delivering wanted to reduce its timeline to get results and
CIRA Bioscience der
high quality decision-making data at the earliest speed up its ability to make decisions around
Firma AstraZeneca, opportunity serves to accelerate research and whether to move a candidate to the next step
und Trish Meek,
maintain product pipelines that are critical to or stop valuable research time and dollars on
Biowissenschaftlerin bei
business success.
Thermo Fisher Scientific,
This article discusses how
erläutern, wie eine
gloable Zentralisierung
centralisation of biochemical
Entscheidungsfindungen
screening can accelerate
bei einer frühen
decision-making in early drug
Medikamenten-Erkennung
discovery. Improved data
beschleunigen kann. turnaround can be addressed with
the deployment of a laboratory
information management system
(LIMS) as part of a centralisation
strategy.
Prescription drugs
AstraZeneca is a major
international healthcare business
engaged in the research,
development, manufacturing
and marketing of prescription Fig. 1. An AZ extension to Nautilus LIMS allows cherry-
pharmaceuticals as well as offering picking of samples which match various (dynamically
healthcare services through state- configured) criteria.
www.scientistlive.com
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