B
ringing a drug to market, and ahead of the competition, is a costly and time-consuming
endeavour. As pharmaceutical companies look for ways to streamline the process, the trend of outsourcing research and development work is likely to continue. By providing specialist knowledge in a diversity of fi elds, contract research organisations (CROs) are freeing companies to focus efforts elsewhere. Compared to other
laboratories, CROs have unique needs – and Terry Smallmon, director of life sciences at LabVantage Solutions, says that the highest of these is the ability to acquire, integrate and manage multiple sources of data across an enterprise, including tracking samples from cradle to grave. ‘The ability to process information quickly and create streams that analyse that data is also important, as is the need to organise it in ways that make
8 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
Beth Sharp fi nds out how fl exible data management solutions are improving operations within contract labs
sense to the scientists, whether that be via experiments, projects or studies,’ he continues. These tasks are made no easier
by the trials becoming ever more complex. Ed Krasovec, senior manager of global marketing/ product development at Starlims, believes the days of the blockbuster drug are increasingly harder to reproduce due to the fact we are moving into an era of personalised medicine. ‘This basically means that the drugs themselves are being targeted towards smaller populations that have very specifi c conditions.’ He adds that not only is the development itself highly focused, but the trials are increasing in number – add that to the complexity driven by regulatory requirements, and the demands made on the software increase.
Look to the management The effi cient running of a contract laboratory is dependent upon how information is gathered and subsequently managed. Laboratory Management Systems (LIMS) and Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs) are both crucial for maintaining smooth operations. For a CRO, data is the end product and as such it often needs to be presented in a specifi c format depending on their clients’ software. Ian Berry, group leader, eScience at Evotec, says: ‘Without having to buy every piece of software under the sun to keep our partners happy, it becomes a question of working out a generic way of communicating data in a common format that is easy for us and our partners to export
and import. It comes down to fl exibility in terms of what their requirements are, and being able to implement a solution on a sensible cost basis for us.’ Evotec, a CRO specialising in
the discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs, tends to communicate using standard fi le formats like SD fi les and Excel. During the next few years the company will be extending its data management portfolio by looking at options for a LIMS to support those departments that rely heavily on MS Excel to enhance their data management processes. ‘MS Excel is wonderful for
what it does and is brilliant as a way of showing information, but as a data storage system it’s not that great and can soon devolve into “Excel hell”,’ says Berry.
www.scientific-computing.com
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