Bioinformatics Platform Designed to Manage Research Data

A bioinformatics suite has been developed to handle structure activity relationship (SAR) analysis, chemical informatics, data capture, compound sourcing, and biochemical data management. The solution will be used to register, query, browse, analyze, and visualize information across multiple research programs and project teams.

Dotmatics (Bishops Stortford, UK), a provider of informatics tools and scientific data management solutions to the international pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, reported that it has licensed its bioinformatics suite to IRBM Science Park (Rome, Italy).

Stephen Gallagher, chief executive officer of Dotmatics, said, “Having had a fruitful working relationship with IRBM prior to its spin-off from Merck Sharpe & Dohme, it’s a great pleasure to be able to continue to work with IRBM Science Park as they create an informatics platform optimized for the sites new business model.”

Alberto Bresciani, head of screening technologies at IRBM Science Park, said, “Our choice of the Dotmatics software suite was based on our need for a reliable but flexible chemoinformatics environment capable of addressing data management and data analysis across a set of highly diverse projects. We have found the flexibility and ease of use of the Dotmatics tools to be perfectly aligned with our project teams needs, providing us with a unified platform from which to efficiently manage scientific data. The suite’s tools for sharing information across the organization have been a huge success, and Dotmatics’ support in customizing the software to our needs has been first rate. We are excited to be going forward with Dotmatics during this period of rapid expansion of IRBM Science Park’s operations and information management needs.”

By enabling discovery organizations to share and use their research information more efficiently, Dotmatics’ goals are to facilitate the generation of strategic knowledge, making the right information available to the right person, at the right time and to boost customers’ productivity by maximizing their information and knowledge awareness across the spectrum of their discovery activities.

Product highlights include (1) Browser, a web-based tool for querying, browsing, and visualizing biologic databases such as IDBS’ activity base and any chemical database. (2) Vortex, a world-class visualization and analytics platform for scientific and nonscientific data. (3) Gateway, a securely enables research teams to share information internally and with external partners. (4) Pinpoint, a powerful Oracle (Redwood Shores, CA, USA) chemical cartridge for querying and integrating chemical databases. Pinpoint is an indexing and search tool at a cost-effective price (developed in collaboration with Astex Therapeutics [Cambridge, UK]). (5) Register, a flexible and scalable chemical registration system. (6) Nucleus, a map and import biologic and nonbiologic data files into an Oracle database. (7) Lastly, Studies, a screening data management tool.

Created in October 2009 as a spin-off from Merck Research Laboratories’ basic research site in Rome (Italy), IRBM Science Park provides a wide range research services for drug discovery, organic chemistry, and biomedical sciences. IRBM Science Park additionally collaborates with major international pharmaceutical companies and research organizations toward the discovery of new small molecule and peptide therapeutics and biologics.

Related Links:
Dotmatics
IRBM Science Park