Amphora Discovery, Karo Bio and Inspire Pharmaceuticals implement ActivityBase software to manage drug discovery data.
ID Business Solutions (IDBS), a provider of integrated data management, analysis and decision-making software for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agrochemical industries, has announced several new customers for its ActivityBase software suite in North Carolina, including Amphora Discovery, Karo Bio and Inspire Pharmaceuticals.
Neil Kipling, chairman and CEO of IDBS commented: "Despite the pressures on the biotech sector over the last 12 months, companies are increasing their investment in data management.
A solid foundation to capture, integrate, organise and share data with collaborators is fundamental for biotechs as they strive to reduce cycle times, increase productivity and lower the overall cost of research." He continued: "We are pleased to be working with such innovative research organisations in North Carolina - and around the world - meeting their needs with extensible, value-adding informatics applications." Amphora Discovery differentiates itself by the quality, precision and comprehensiveness of the data it generates both for collaborators and for its internal lead generation programmes.
William Janzen, vice president of operations at Amphora said: "ActivityBase fulfils the role of discovery data management system as well as a full-scale Lims here at Amphora.
Since we screen on a 24/5 schedule, reliability and speed are critical.
We use ActivityBase to integrate all our precision data, target information and standard operating procedures from HTS and high-throughput ADME surrogate assays through hit-to-lead and lead optimization.
One of the major benefits is that the ActivityBase chemical registration system delivers true uniqueness of structure through its effective treatment of stereochemistry." Amphora's proprietary microfluidic assay technologies, which are run on the Caliper 250 HTS system, are fully integrated with ActivityBase, enabling efficient capture and integration of biological data with chemical information, and data from parallel assays.
William Janzen added: "ActivityBase was instrumental in enabling us to go from having no staff to a full scale screening operation in less than six months.
By not re-inventing the wheel in terms of data management, we have been able to focus our efforts on scientific innovation." Karo Bio is a leader in the field of nuclear receptors and proteomic-based drug discovery.
The company collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to develop new tissue-selective and receptor specific drugs.
Robin Hyde-DeRuyscher, section head and global coordinator for assay technology at Karo Bio in North Carolina commented: "We find ActivityBase extraordinarily useful for potency determinations and single point assays, but its benefits go far beyond this. Within the ActivityBase relational database we capture and filter very complex data sets associated with hundreds of experimental conditions." He continued: "Our researchers in Sweden and North Carolina all access the same unified data, enabling us to analyze numerous probe activities at multiple receptor sites." Inspire Pharmaceuticals discovers and develops new drugs to treat diseases characterised by deficiencies in the body's innate defense mechanisms of mucosal hydration and mucociliary clearance.
Inspire conducts primarily cell-based assays in-vitro and ex-vivo, and carries out extensive IC50 and EC50 analyses on the data.
Inspire integrates all its experimental information within ActivityBase, including some pre-clinical data.
Sam Shaver, director of chemistry, commented: "The genuine integration of our biological and chemical data within ActivityBase differentiates this application from others available in the marketplace.
Since using ActivityBase our data has become much more accessible.
Scientists who need to analyse data across multiple receptor lines are able to do so with ease." He continued: "We use ActivityBase extensively, and making full use of its capabilities has helped Discovery to stay nimble and efficient.
Before using ActivityBase, it was necessary to do much more ad hoc tracking of inventory and other information.
Overall, we are very happy with the system and the support we have received from IDBS."
