‘Mainlining’ research content to scientists

LONDON—With a goal of transforming how researchers accesscurated biological content and apply it to their research workflows, IDBS hastaken the wraps off of a partnership with the Property & Science Divisionof Thomson Reuters.

Under this partnership, the companies are integrating theirtechnologies through IDBS' ScienceLink scientific content brokerage platform,enabling researchers to access scientific content from Thomson ReutersIntegrity, combined with the delivery methods of the Cortellis Targets API fromwithin E-WorkBook Suite.

ScienceLink, a feature of IDBS' E-WorkBook enterprise ELN,allows customers to launch a single query to search and retrieve data frominternal systems and from leading licensed external scientific data sources.With the integration, research teams can now search literature and curatedsources via the Cortellis for Informatics Targets API directly withinE-WorkBook.

Chris Molloy, vice president of corporate development atIDBS, says the recent release of the Cortellis platform provides easier accessto a wide range of content.

"This relationship—which we have been building for sometime—provides scientists with the ability to access a rich new ecosystem ofhigh-quality information when and where they need it to make more informeddecisions," he says.

According to Molloy, the focus of the collaboration is toenable scientists to access the broadest range of Thomson Reuters' informationthrough the electronic lab notebook (ELN), which is at the heart of a modernscientist's workflow. IDBS and Thomson Reuters have already made available arange of biology-focused, target-based information and are expanding this to awide range of data across the Thomson Reuters portfolio.

Molloy notes that "mainlining" research content toscientists is analogous to "always-on" internet.

"Look at the difference that has made to the use of data,"he explains. "Forming new ideas and turning those ideas into products are whatR&D is about. Even 'Eureka' moments need the right environment to occur,"he says. "Enabling easy access to relevant—and available—information is acritical part of that environment."

Molloy says the partners will continue to work on expandingthe data sources that E-WorkBook can see.

"We will continue to prioritize content where we see unmetneed, but also listen closely to our customers for how they wish to best usethis combination of internal and external content," he says.

In transforming how researchers access curated biologicalcontent and apply it to their workflow, Molloy says the scientific processbegins by addressing facts already known—"yet these facts are often hard tofind and siloed, making the task harder than it needs to be, particularly intoday's data-rich age," he says. "For many years, chemists have benefited fromaccess to online data, and this is a natural part of their workflow. Access torich biology content levels the playing field and enables biologists to buildbetter hypotheses, avoid rework and save time. In a short period, thisfunctionality will be not just commonplace, but expected by every biologist."

The combined solution will accelerate biological research inareas such as target identification and validation, experimental pharmacology,toxicology and biomarker discovery.

"Biology is an important research area for our customers,and we are working to gather and deliver the highest quality and most relevantscientific content across the R&D lifecycle to help organizations speedinnovation and deliver actionable insights and results," explains Joseph F.Donahue, senior vice president of global sales at Thomson Reuters.

According to Neil Kipling, founder and CEO of IDBS,partnering with Thomson Reuters will streamline advanced biological researchfor customers.

"It is crucial for researchers to have a solid knowledgebase of the results of previous studies in order to direct future investigations,"he says. "Previously, scientists would need to search in various systems andcollate data manually. Now they can access insightful data at the right pointin their research, presenting considerable savings in time and effort."

The collaborators are already able to see success in theconversations with their customers, who are engaged and excited by the prospectof getting more from their data.

"They are also pleased that their strategic IT partners arethinking of their issues and coming to them with innovation," Molloy concludes."It's a very different relationship from that of a simple IT or ELN vendor. Inthe longer term, both Thomson Reuters and IDBS will see commercial return inthe expansion of the use of curated content and E-WorkBook, which is very mucha tool for positive change in R&D organizations."

IDBS extendspartnership with ChemAxon to boost ELN Parallel Synthesis capabilities

LONDON—IDBS also announced April 25 that it will extend apartnership with cheminformatics software developer ChemAxon to add newfunctionality to its ChemBook electronic laboratory notebook (ELN).

ChemBook is part of IDBS' E-WorkBook Suite, ascience-neutral ELN used across enterprises from basic research through tomanufacturing.

IDBS has added ChemAxon's Reactor engine, known as theParallel Synthesis add-on, to support the workflows of chemists, synthesizinglibraries of compounds in a parallel fashion. Reactor is a high-performancelibrary enumeration engine that produces synthetically relevant virtuallibraries. Chemists can define a generic reaction or a set of reactantstructures and combine the two to enumerate and iteratively tune a set ofproduct compounds and discrete reactions on a high-throughput scale.

According to the companies, this process removes tediousrecording and drawing-out of chemical reactions multiple times.

"Intelligent and flexible enumeration of chemical reactionsfor compound library design and combinatorial chemistry is an essentialcapability within an ELN environment. In choosing our Reactor, IDBS is bringingleading-edge performance and usability to ChemBook clients," said Alex Drijver,CEO of ChemAxon, in a statement. "We look forward to bringing morefunctionality and performance as we continue to expand our relationship withIDBS."