Genedata Screener Supports Small Molecule Research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Screener's High Throughput Screening Capabilities Yield High-quality Data for the Broad Institute's NIH-funded Molecular Libraries and Imaging Initiative
Lexington, Mass. (USA) and Basel, Switzerland, October 6, 2009
Genedata, a leading provider of in silico solutions for pharmaceutical R&D and related life sciences, today announced that the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT (www.broadinstitute.org) has adopted Genedata Screener® for small-molecule screening, which is integral to the Institute's contribution to the Molecular Libraries and Imaging Initiative funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). This NIH program for medical research, comprised of nine institutions, conducts high-throughput biological studies of diverse small molecules to advance new drug discoveries.
"We're screening upwards of 50 assays and analyzing more than 20 million wells of screening data," explained Dave DeCaprio, associate director of the Chemical Biology Platform at the Broad Institute. "Our team evaluated a number of systems and found Genedata to enable the kind of massively high-throughput screening and high-quality data analyses that we need."
Screening Times Reduced to Days
DeCaprio's team is using Screener's Assay Analyzer and Condoseo modules. Providing analysis from a single plate to an entire screening campaign, Assay Analyzer captures data from diverse plate readers and processes them based on predefined business rules. Condoseo fits thousands of dose-response curves within minutes for efficient IC50 determination in validation and assay panel screens. According to DeCaprio, screening campaigns that once took several weeks to execute can now be done in days, due in large part to Screener's ease-of-use, advanced visualization, and statistical rigor.
"Screener's interactive visualization capabilities enable our screeners to analyze their own data, eliminating the need for them to involve a separate informatics group," said DeCaprio. "Now, our informatics group can focus on more strategic issues while screeners use their time more efficiently without having to shift between projects. Moreover, Genedata's high-quality data analyses and the confidence we have in those data enable us to focus on meta data analyses. Now, we focus on the larger issues aimed at designing new compound libraries and applying them in new kinds of biology."
"The Broad Institute is one of the world's leading research facilities and Dave's group is making a tremendous contribution to the public domain's knowledge on small molecules," said Dr. Othmar Pfannes, CEO of Genedata. "We're honored to have Genedata Screener used in this phase of early-stage drug discovery, which will drive new medicines in fighting psychiatric disease, cancer, infectious disease, and diabetes."
About Genedata
Genedata develops and globally markets sophisticated computational solutions for drug discovery and related research processes in the life sciences. Genedata's solutions enable scientists to process, integrate, analyze, and manage large and complex experimental data sets generated by high throughput technologies. Solutions include Genedata Phylosopher® for target discovery and integrative biological data management, Genedata Screener®
for automated high throughput screening and high content screening,
and Genedata Expressionist® for biomarker discovery and personalized medicine. Founded in 1997, Genedata is privately held, with headquarters in
Basel, Switzerland, and offices in Boston & San Francisco, USA, Konstanz & Munich, Germany and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, please visit www.genedata.com.
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Genedata
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Jackie Thrasivoulos
Genedata
Public Relations
Phone +1 508 881 3109
jackie.thrasivoulos(at)genedata.com
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