Cancer Research Technology Ltd expands drug discovery Infrastructure – ActivityBase chosen for data management
ID Business Solutions (IDBS) announced that Cancer Research Technology Ltd (CRT), a drug discovery company based in London wholly owned by the charity Cancer Research UK, will implement IDBS’ ActivityBase informatics platform to manage its chemical and biological drug discovery data. Working at the critical interface between academic research and the pharmaceutical industry, CRT’s role is to accelerate promising discoveries from the 200+ academic research projects funded by Cancer Research UK, into effective therapeutics in the clinic.
Until recently, most of CRT’s successes have been in the development of novel techniques, for example, new types of high-throughput screens for DNA repair enzymes. Now, CRT is expanding its screening and lead optimisation capacity, aiming to deliver significant new chemical entities for development by partners in the pharmaceutical industry. “Improving potency is one of our main goals but we want to be sure that improving potency doesn’t create problems in, for example, one of our selectivity, ADME or toxicity assays. Therefore, being able to track all that data against a structure is absolutely vital,” commented Dr. Tim Hammonds, group leader for assay development and screening. “We needed a robust informatics platform that could integrate both our chemical inventory and all our biological data easily since we have limited IT backup,” added Dr. Tony Raynham, Head of Medicinal Chemistry. “We know ActivityBase is the industry standard for biology, but we knew less about the chemistry side so we pushed hard to satisfy ourselves that it was equally strong. We chose ActivityBase because it is a mature product that gave us the best all-round solution,” commented Dr. Raynham.
Neil Kipling, Chairman and CEO of IDBS commented: “CRT is at the forefront of harnessing the insights gained about the molecular basis of cancer and turning these into tangible patient benefits as fast as possible. IDBS is pleased to be working with CRT, providing a scalable, out-of-the-box information infrastructure that will facilitate its work with minimal maintenance overheads.”
About Cancer Research Technology Limited
Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT) is a specialist technology transfer company which aims to develop new discoveries in cancer research for the benefit of cancer patients. CRT is wholly owned by Cancer Research UK, the largest independent funder of cancer research in the world. CRT works closely with leading international cancer scientists and their institutes to protect intellectual property arising from their research and to establish links with commercial partners. CRT facilitates the discovery, development and marketing of new cancer therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and enabling technologies. Further information about CRT can be found at: http://www.cancertechnology.co.uk .
About IDBS
IDBS works with discovery organisations to maximise the value of research data, by providing software solutions to capture, manage and use biological and chemical information in an integrated framework. IDBS delivers complete — and proven — applications, such as ActivityBase, that bridge the gap between IT and science. Headquartered in Guildford, United Kingdom, IDBS has offices in Emeryville, California; Parsippany, New Jersey; and, Cambridge, Massachusetts. IDBS partners with CTC Laboratory Systems in Japan to market IDBS products and services. Founded in 1989, IDBS employs over 150 people worldwide.
About ActivityBase
ActivityBase is an integrated data management software application that incorporates high-throughput and high-content screening, multiple full dose response determinations, lead optimisation, pharmacology and toxicology studies, quantitative expression data handling and inventory tracking, combined with the ability to register, manage and display chemical structures and reactions. Through the implementation of ActivityBase, scientists can easily define and run experiments, capture, visualise and analyse the information derived and then share the data throughout the company and with collaborators to help streamline the discovery research process.
