Standardising access to data: ACD labs helps lab users increase productivity through the data standards and characterising the interpretation of data, writes Sophia Ktori.

Citation metadata

Author: Sophia Ktori
Date: Feb-March 2020
From: Scientific Computing World(Vol. 170, Issue 170)
Publisher: Europa Science, Ltd.
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,335 words
Lexile Measure: 1610L

Document controls

Main content

Article Preview :

ACD/Labs develops and commercialises software solutions for scientists working with small molecules in chemical, biochemical, and pharmaceutical R&D. The firm has specialist expertise in the development of software that allows organisations to digitally assemble analytical, structural and molecular information for what it describes as 'effective decision-making, problem-solving, and product life cycle control.'

Andrew Anderson, VP business development at ACD/Labs, says the way that analytical data can be accessed and utilised still represents a major challenge at every stage of a product life cycle, and this can impact how that data is used to inform decision making. The ultimate aim of any digitisation initiative in the pharma or biotech arena is to develop better, safer and more effective drugs faster, with less attrition, and lower overall costs. At the most fundamental level you can increase the velocity of your product life cycle, and you are doing this partly by reducing your individual unit operations within that process flow of making decisions, and facilitating regulatory approval by reducing the complexity and costs, associated with preparing responses and accessing relevant information.'

Providing decision support

However, even with all the investment that has been made in areas such as data standardisation, significant bottlenecks still exist in the decision support arena, he maintains. Take the example of GMP drug manufacture for clinical trials. Each lot is rigorously tested, but if a purity issue arises and batches don't pass QC, there will be an investigation, part of which will be comparative, and the results of that investigation will inform next steps, and potentially help to prevent future issues.'

The failed batch will be analysed and that analytical data compared with a reference standard for compound purity, and with data from historical batches that do meet quality standards. 'What happens from a data perspective is that people responsible for undertaking that comparison will have to go on a data scavenger hunt.' And this is no simple task, he stated.

'Relevant chromatography data for the failed batch, the reference standard and...

Get Full Access
Gale offers a variety of resources for education, lifelong learning, and academic research. Log in through your library to get access to full content and features!
Access through your library

Source Citation

Source Citation   

Gale Document Number: GALE|A621580905