With its rapid growth and increasing population of chemists, MethylGene needed a centralised structure database that would tie in all its scientific data
MethylGene is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel and proprietary inhibitor drugs against enzyme targets that play key roles in cancer and infectious diseases.
The company focuses on high quality targets that are novel, have been shown clearly to be responsible for disease, and are commercially attractive.
MethylGene's drug discovery approach is structured around the use of functional genomics to validate targets, and the use of rational drug design and medicinal chemistry to design, synthesise, and optimise inhibitor compounds.
This strategy allows the company to generate leads quickly and efficiently for development into clinical candidates.
MethylGene has built a facility with multiple state-of-the-art technologies in both chemistry and biology, which is led by a strong core of synthetic organic chemists with a wealth of experience in medicinal and combinatorial chemistry who can design, synthesise, and optimise compounds rapidly and efficiently.
Need for a centralised database.
With its rapid growth and increasing population of chemists, MethylGene needed a centralised structure database that would tie in all its scientific data.
A poll of the chemists showed that their preferred desktop tool was ChemDraw, so IT coordinators Daniel Nasturica and Eric Chan began to investigate offerings from CambridgeSoft.
After evaluating a number of competitive products, MethylGene chose the ChemOffice WebServer platform as the base for its scientific data management.
Among the reasons for this choice were flexibility, ease of use, familiarity with ChemDraw, and competitive pricing.
Initial installation of the ChemOffice WebServer and registration system was accomplished in only two days, and that included porting of legacy data, consisting mainly of some 5000 Isis/Draw structures.
The system was first tested by the IT group, and then introduced to the chemists.
Formal training was provided for the chemists, a manual was prepared and distributed, and additional one-on-one training was made available for those who wanted it.
Once the chemists were using the registration system to catalogue new compounds they were making, the IT group began thinking about a chemical inventory system for commercial (purchased) compounds.
CambridgeSoft's inventory module was immediately attractive since it used the same ChemOffice WebServer platform and offered total integration with the registration system.
The testing of the inventory system was done by two IT staff members, and then all of MethylGene's commercial compounds were entered into the system.
Today there are about 84,000 compounds in the registration system and about 4500 in the Inventory Manager. Tracking biology and chemistry.
Next, MethylGene wanted to link its compound data with biological data from high-throughput screening (HTS).
The company's biologists were used to working with Excel, but large amounts of data were expected from the HTS work.
To integrate the HTS data with the compound data, and still provide an Excel interface for the biologists, MethylGene collaborated with CambridgeSoft in developing two new ChemOffice WebServer applications called BioAssay HTS and BioSAR Browser.
After a year of development, the applications are in release, and are handling the HTS data, as well as the biologists' requirements to view and enter assay results. MethylGene recently deployed the released applications throughout the entire company.
Dan Nasturica, IT coordinator at MethylGene, comments "The power of the CambridgeSoft applications is that they are easily customisable.
An understanding of programming is required, but once it is there, multiple things can be done without much trouble." Besides the technical requirements, the challenge of the new system was an organisational issue of showing the scientists the necessity of keeping information in the system, and giving due attention to the correctness of the data as entered.
Dan stresses that it is important to have a centralised database system in place before the number of compounds grows too large, and to provide training and policies so that the scientists use the systems.
With the Registration System, Inventory Manager, BioAssay HTS and lately the BioSAR Browser applications in production, MethylGene is capturing all its biology data and tying it to chemical compound records.
BioSAR Browser is used to view any desired report on a particular compound.
The programs save time by simplifying data entry, and they improve decision-making because of the availability and quick accessibility of all the company's information.
CambridgeSoft products are supplied and supported in the UK by Adept Scientific.
