SLAS 2019 Americas Sample Management Symposium

Service Organizations within R&D face a unique challenge of having to be flexible to accommodate the varying needs of several customers requesting their services, yet agile enough to operate at a higher speed and efficiency. This is the guiding principle for Compound Management, which is a critical backbone to the functioning of several labs involved in Drug Discovery and Development. Compound Management Groups interact with many internal and external teams receiving, storing and managing of compounds of al modalities from Chemists, Biologists, CROs and Vendors and dispersing, plating and shipping of compounds to various groups such as High Throughput Screening, DMPK, External Labs.    In this presentation, we talk about our experience in implementing a High Throughput Assay Plate Preparation solution for a top 10 Bio Pharmaceutical company. The solution combined many capabilities needed for Assay Plate Preparation such as a Preordering, Ordering, Reordering, Fulfillment, Plate Map Reporting, Label Printing, Liquid Handler Integration under a unified User Experience. The solution was implemented through a combination of Robotic Systems, Informatics Solution and Business Process Changes. The primary goals of the project were to increase throughput and efficiency and reduce wastage of compounds/tips/plates.    The project was implemented in under 6 months with the ability to deliver Assay plates for High Throughput ADME assays with a Turn Around time of less than 2 days from Compound Registration to Fulfillment. The solution supports creation of 96/384/1536 well Assays plates for Single Point, Dose Response and Mixture/Cassette Assays. Over a period of 1 year, the solution was expanded to support more than 70 Discovery and Development assays run by 20 labs (internal and external) across 2 continents. Today, more than 50K compounds are requested and fulfilled through the solution.     The presentation aims to highlight the critical elements - Risks, Opportunities, Challenges, Learnings –for success as seen from the perspective of the Compound Management Group, its Customers and the Informatics Team.