As the pharmaceutical industry’s use of external collaborations for R&D has increased, so has the need for the efficient and secure sharing, integration and management of experimental data. Informatics platforms for collecting, storing and analyzing experimental data, notably instrument data, have been integral to enabling external R&D activities with issues of scalability, data transparency and business rules of particular importance. In this article, IBO spoke with three informatics firms to understand how the pharmaceutical industry’s external research collaborations have affected the use and development of their software.

Genedata provides software platforms for analyzing and managing biological research data. Its products include Genedata Screener for managing screening data for drug discovery and development, Genedata Expressionist for molecular profiling studies, and Genedata Biologics for biologics R&D workflows. According to Oliver Leven, PhD, head of Gene Screener Professional Services, the Genedata Screener platform has long been used for collaborative R&D, whether within a single company or by a company working with external research partners. As he explained, ”In the end, it is not about a single scientist sitting at a desk and doing analysis. The analysis must be done within the framework of the organization—be it homogeneous or heterogeneous.”

Designed to integrate and coordinate data from different instruments and workflows, Genedata Screener is amendable to various collaboration scenarios. “With its unique analytical capabilities, scalability and openness, Genedata Screener has been adopted by a large number of pharmaceutical companies, CROs and academic research institutions around the world as their single screening platform,” stated Dr. Leven. Discussing all of the company’s platforms, he told IBO, “Unique to our solutions is a high degree of built-in business logic capabilities with respect to integration, performance and scalability—all important to enable collaboration.”

In May, the company announced that Roche had shared access to GeneScreener with its external collaborators. “What’s new now is that we have instituted a set of collaboration-specific business rules that allow external partners (i.e., external to the pharmaceutical company) to access and store experimental data in Genedata Screener, thereby following certain confidentiality, security and chain-of-custody policies,” explained Dr. Leven.

For such collaborations, concerns include data transparency and harmonization. “This also means that Genedata Screener enables pharmaceutical companies to efficiently collaborate with external CROs because it gives those external partners controlled insight into data on a need-to-know basis,” explained Dr. Leven. “It also allows harmonization of the applied data analysis methods between pharmas and external partners, and therefore creates transparency for important decisions (e.g., decisions on hit calling and compound progression),” he said. “Having both in-house and external researchers using the same consistent methodology and standardized processing of results is critical for maintaining research integrity.”

Uniform and consistent business processes are especially important. “This means that Genedata Screener provides a platform for sharing business rules and analysis methodologies as well as strict control of access, (re-)analysis and modification permissions,” said Dr. Leven.

Dr. Leven emphasized that Genedata Screener’s design and deployment have not really changed, even though external research collaborations have become more common. “What’s new is that the users come more and more from different legal entities, while in the past, they were maybe from only one or two. As a consequence, data confidentiality, data security and control of chain of custody becomes more and more an important topic.” As for addressing ongoing challenges for pharmaceutical firms’ external research collaborations, he commented, “Currently, the biggest challenges we see are related to usability versus data volumes, data security and data privacy aspects, as lots of these data are related to issues such as personal information.”

As for the impact of cloud computing on such collaborations, Dr. Leven told IBO, “For us, the cloud is, of course, a powerful channel for collaboration.” “But, ultimately, leveraging the cloud for collaboration is a decision made by our customers. Our solutions are available to them on premise, in the cloud or in their own private cloud,” he noted.

ACD/Labs provides informatics solutions for storing, managing and analyzing chemical data. Its platforms include ACD/Spectrus, which combines data from multiple techniques for processing and interpretation, and ACD/Percepta for in silico predictions of physicochemical and ADME/Tox properties. As with Genedata, the firm’s solutions are inherently designed for collaborations and amendable, through application programming interfaces (APIs) and the addition of data formats, to external collaborations. “One of the big challenges in soft logistics for pharmaceutical companies obtaining work products from CROs is being able to exchange analytical data,” explained Graham A. McGibbon, PhD, manager, Scientific Solutions and Partnerships at ACD/Labs. “Developments in ACD/Spectrus include continuous enhancement of data import, with over 130 formats and types of data supported. This is on top of an enterprise-scalable platform with an API and automation tools that facilitate moving files, processing data, and storing or sharing results.”

Because ACD/Spectrus is designed to work with different types of data from various sources, collaboration is already enabled. “We have cases where a partner has outsourced a particular activity, for example, compound synthesis,” explained Dr. McGibbon. “Here, the analytical data specifically relating to the compounds may be spectroscopic, chromatographic, evidence of purity [or] evidence of structure. Handling this disparate analytical data is a particular strength of the ACD/Spectrus Platform.”

Another example of how ACD/Labs’ platforms enable external collaboration is their ability to work with live data—data that can be accessed and interrogated—as opposed to static data in images in PDFs. “Customers with the Spectrus platform can share live data stored in our database. Partners can have their own databases or, with the appropriate permissions, work in one database,” said Dr. McGibbon.

One change Dr. McGibbon noted with greater external collaboration activity is the utilization of new IT capabilities. “For years, the industry demanded formidable tools and advanced features in thick client packages. Latterly, however, design has definitely been focused on enterprise scalability and implementation, web client accessibility and ease of use.”

Collaborations also create demand from external partners, which can be newer, smaller research organizations in need of maximum productivity. “In order to be productive, first of all, you can use familiar tools and tools that help with automation. Those can deal with uniform aspects of data collection, data processing and even basic data interpretation,” explained Dr. McGibbon. “It means that scientists move to a review stage, which is actually highly productive.”

ACD/Labs platforms are used in private clouds. As Dr. McGibbon noted, more drug companies are using cloud computing. “We are not providing cloud IaaS [infrastructure as a service, or the “public cloud,” for which the cloud capabilities and infrastructure are provided by a commercial cloud provider, such as Amazon or Google] as part of our development portfolio, but we are developing our products with cloud deployments in mind, since that is the trend of the future,” he noted. “The initial concerns of data vulnerability and security are being balanced against an increasing need to ease the burden on internal IT departments.”

BIOVIA, part of software firm 3D Dassault, provides a range of lab management, cheminformatic and bioinformatics solutions, including modeling and simulation software, BIOVIA Pipeline Pilot for workflow management and analysis, as well as ELNs and LIMS. Launched last year, the company’s ScienceCloud platform is a public cloud solution supporting selected BIOVIA platforms. As Matt Hahn PhD, CTO of BIOVIA, explained, “Because [drug research] is being done increasingly with partners, the idea that this can be done within your corporate network, behind your firewalls, is no longer tenable. The idea with ScienceCloud is how can you create an infrastructure in the cloud that is available to all your partners and very easy to access in a secure fashion through the cloud.”

Security in the public cloud is a concern that BIOVIA has addressed, according to Dr. Hahn. Science Cloud is ISO 27011 certified and allows for detailed control of information access. He noted that many large companies use public clouds, and highlighted the extensive capabilities and expertise of public cloud firms for data security.

Compared to private clouds, public clouds can result in a greater reduction in cost of ownership, such as decreased staffing and infrastructure expenses. “When you are looking to the cloud, you can avoid much of the cost associated with internal IT efforts,” explained Dr. Hahn. “That no longer is being done by the pharma companies and is provided by the cloud software provider. So, if you look at the cost associated with adoption of functionality in ScienceCloud versus what it would take total cost on premise, it’s significantly cheaper in the cloud because you’re not having to provide that. “

A public cloud is especially viable for external research partnerships, as they can be easily initiated and ended. “Typically, in private clouds, you have to be granted access into the internal network. And, again, when we talked about that project spin up and spin down and the lifecycle management, it becomes much more fluid in a public cloud environment.” He added, “So this whole agility associated with project lifecycle is an important design criteri[on].”

Many drug firms are utilizing hybrid cloud solutions, a mixture of private and public clouds, according to Dr. Hahn. “They are looking at these measured migrations to the cloud, where they are going to put certain applications for certain CROs up in the cloud.” Pipeline Pilot is adept at coordinating and integrating such data. “So, if I have a CRO, and they’re providing data in one format, but I need to look at or generate reports of that data, how do I transform that data so that I can consume or report on it? And that has been what Pipeline Pilot has been used for. But now we’re doing it in the context of the cloud.” ScienceCloud also allows for greater automation, for example, of business rules.