R&D scientific software company Dotmatics recently debuted Chemistry Solution for Small Molecule Drug Discovery, a software package including applications, workflows and data management capabilities.
“Supporting collaboration is a central theme of the solution,” said Andrew LeBeau, vice president, product integrations at Dotmatics. “Drug discovery is a team-effort, spanning internally within organizations and, often, externally as well via work with strategic partners and utilization of Contract Research Organizations (CROs).”
In a recent email interview, LeBeau explains how the Small Molecule Discovery Solution supports drug delivery collaboration, touches on templates built into the software and sheds light on the company’s user base spanning 2 million researchers.
Drug Discovery & Development (DDD): Could you explain how the Small Molecule Discovery Solution supports collaborative drug discovery?
LeBeau: The Small Molecule Discovery Solution facilitates collaboration within an organization via various mechanisms including streamlined workflows that support request management activities and data sharing. And it supports external collaboration through a dedicated “CRO Workflow” that facilitates automated, secure data exchange across organizational boundaries. But most importantly, the Dotmatics Browser module remains at the heart of the solution. Browser allows users to see all the data they need, whenever they want, irrespective of who or how it was generated. This allows drug discovery teams to make better-informed decisions, faster, to accelerate their research programs.
DDD: Could you briefly walk through some of the highlights of the Small Molecule Discovery Solution’s templates for design, synthesis, sample logistics, QC analysis, screening and SAR analysis?
LeBeau: Drug discovery research, particularly the lead optimization phase, is governed by an innovation cycle characterized as “Make, Test, Decide” (or some variation of this). In the Make phase, chemists synthesize candidate compounds, which are then assayed in the Test phase, and the assay results are evaluated in the Decide phase, during which researchers make decisions on what to make next in the ensuing cycle. The Dotmatics solution contains templates and capabilities that support all phases of the innovation cycle. Design tools allow researchers to determine what characteristics of their compound series provide positive and negative attributes, and are able to make changes to optimize for performance. Synthesis templates guide users through experimental design and data capture processes, minimizing manual data entry, to ensure the highest quality data is obtained. The solution includes an optional capability that brings advanced machine learning approaches for Structure-Activity Relationship (SAR) analysis to researchers without the need to understand the underlying algorithms, allows those researchers to focus on the results.
DDD: Dotmatics’ website mentions that more than 2 million researchers use the company’s software. Could you briefly describe what has enabled the company to build up that user base?
LeBeau: Dotmatics has gone through major changes over the last 18 months, where several leading industry brands have come together under the Dotmatics name. In addition to Dotmatics well-established capabilities for chemistry, we have significantly expanded our biology capabilities with brands such as Geneious and SnapGene for biological sequence data analysis and molecular cloning.
GraphPad Prism is the de facto standard for scientific data statistical analysis and generation of publication quality graphs. In the drug discovery industry, Prism is used for assay development and analysis of production assay data, and it will soon be integrated with the Chemistry Solution. Dotmatics also has significant capabilities in the flow cytometry space, with Cytapex, FCS Express and Omiq, and for mass spec data analysis with Protein Metrics. These best-of-breed scientific applications, with highly devoted and motivated user-bases, are being integrated with the Dotmatics Platform. In fact, just a few months ago we announced a biology solution for antibody discovery. Going forward, this combination of capabilities will allow Dotmatics to provide even greater support to the drug discovery industry, to help power new breakthroughs in human health.