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Case study: Secure data sharing – making collaborative drug discovery a reality
CDD vault helps lab users overcome data challenges in modern drug discovery workflows
With the world’s
‘We had spreadsheets all over the place, and data from different
projects that were just separated in different folders. It got to the point where we didn’t know where to put our data, or where to later find it.’ This is one of the common issues that has led global biotechs of all sizes to Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD), a software provider for research and development data management. Drug discovery is data
driven, and that data underpins every scientific and commercial decision, which could ultimately spell the difference between the success and failure of a research and developmental program for new drugs. Yet in today’s labs the handling and management of data doesn’t necessarily maximise its value or usability. Scientists commonly store and manage their data in unsecure, often difficult to find disparate documents and spreadsheets. While this method might be okay for a lone scientist working in a vacuum, it is not likely to represent a smart approach for collaborative scientists working in drug discovery or in other chemical or biological fields that rely on the ability to store, recall, process and share large amounts of data quickly. CDD Vault acts as a central
smart warehouse for all drug discovery data, explains Kellan Gregory, the informatics firm’s head of product excellence. ‘Our platform offers a comprehensive set of core utilities to allow lab members to access all of their results
data, in its contextual format.’ This means the ability to handle any type of data. ‘As well as being able to capture numbers and text, we can also capture the native file in line with the data.’ A formula builder, tools for activity and physical chemistry property calculations, the ELN and dynamic visualisation tools then provide extra layers of intuitive analyses. Julio Martin is director and head of the Kinetoplastid Discovery Performance Unit (DPU) at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) R&D’s Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation, a ground- breaking PPP initiative set up at GSK’s dedicated diseases of the developing world (DDW) research facility at Tres Cantos in Madrid. The Open Lab Foundation supports collaboration by giving external partners access to GSK compounds, infrastructure and drug discovery expertise, with a view to accelerating research in multiple areas from target discovery and validation, to compound screening lead identification, and optimisation. The organisation chose CDD Vault as is data management platform for all Tres Cantos anti-kinetoplastic screening data generated internally and through external partnerships. ‘This kind of hosted solution means there is no need to have to navigate firewalls, and it also scales up in parallel with project growth. Using CDD Vault means we can put more of our internal resources into scientific research, rather than have increased costs associated with setting up, maintaining and upgrading
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complex platforms,’ Julio says. ‘Researchers can interrogate the database for their own and externally submitted data, and be confident of confidentiality and security for every user.’ Importantly, CDD Vault
can be set up quickly, with no specialist IT input, and is very agile. ‘The days of heavy, custom solutions are numbered, Kellan states. They are expensive, difficult to roll out, and can require extensive ongoing IT expertise. In contrast, we can get a new customer up and running with CDD Vault in minutes. The CDD team manages all of the infrastructure and provides ongoing support for any additional configurations required at any point. The ability to become productive in a short amount of time is really big plus point for our customers.’
And with UK government
figures released in April 2018 indicating that more than four
“Using CDD Vault means we can put more of our internal resources into scientific research, rather than have increased costs associated with setting up, maintaining and upgrading complex platforms”
in 10 of all UK businesses – and 72 per cent of large businesses – suffered a cyber breach or attack in the last 12 months, CDD Vault is highly secure. Built into industry standard SSAE 16 Type II certified cloud storage, and with two-factor authentication and IP tracking on the ground, CDD Vault is designed to minimise the chance of a hack either from the outside, or from inside the client’s organisation James Moe is president, CEO and co-founder of Oligomerix, a small biotech company interested in understanding the role of tau protein in neurodegenerative diseases, and the discovery and development of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies. Moe comments: ‘We’re using CDD Vault as a way of storing our chemical structures, as a way of searching them, as a way of storing all of our assay data. We’re also using it for doing calculations, for analysing our data, for creating reports and communicating the data to others, and then also, very importantly, for working securely with collaborators. So it’s been instrumental for all of those purposes. Another primary concern is having a database where we have better security over our molecules.’
Find out more at:
www.collaborativedrug.com
Reference:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/702074/Cyber_ Security_Breaches_Survey_2018_-_ Main_Report.pdf
Summer 2022 Scientific Computing World 19
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