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Is the CDD database right for me?
Key benefits for all users
- Capture and organize fragmented data.
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Keep pace with high-throughput experiments so data sets don’t pile up unanalyzed.
- Avoid performing redundant research work.
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Maintain project continuity when group members leave.
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Ensure data integrity and availability by archiving to CDD’s safe and secure repository.
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Exploit sophisticated cheminformatics and bioinformatics tools without the need for specialized informatics training.
- Extract the greatest value from preclinical data.
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Mine your own data together with open-access data through a single, intuitive interface.
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Integrate dispersed efforts: test Group A's compounds with Group B's models against Group C's new target.
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Control your data: keep your data completely private, exchange some data confidentially with colleagues you specify, or share openly with the scientific community; specify which data sets to share, with whom to share them, and when they can be shared.
Case #1: Renowned academic biochemistry laboratory
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Challenge:
Generating significant, publishable results was taking too long.
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Specific Problems:
Student and post-doc turnover disrupted data curation and project
continuity. Many data sets could not be processed meaningfully because
of data format issues. The group needed to assay compounds against
quinone-resistant cell lines and compare results with malaria data
stored in archaic formats from old Army medical research archives.
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CDD’s database solved these problems:
Archiving data into a central repository eliminated the continuity issues. Mining the data through a web-based interface enhanced their value. Collaboration features enabled the challenging comparison.
Case #2: Leading academic medicinal chemistry group
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Challenge:
Backlog of unscreened synthesized compounds just kept growing.
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Specific Problems:
Manual data entry takes too long. Tracking all the compounds was difficult. Associated spectra and biodata are stored in PDF, JPEG, and Excel formats. Existing tools could not support the data work flow that the group needed. Research involves multiple two-way and three-way collaborations between chemist, biologists and computational chemists across separate groups.
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CDD’s database solved these problems:
CDD easily customized the flexible database structure to support the group’s needs, enabling it to catch up on the back log. The industrial strength software easily handles the thousands of experimental data sets. Collaboration features enable the group and its partners to enter data for current experiments simultaneously and keep them synchronized.
Case #3: Leading academic biology group
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Challenge:
The urgency of the health crisis in the developing world demands faster solutions.
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Specific Problems:
Group is generating data faster than anyone can analyze them, let alone publish. The professor wants to share the data openly with the world and hopes that new collaborative research relationships will emerge. The group needed a way to archive and mine the data and efficiently share data bidirectionally and multilaterally with over twenty other groups spread across the globe.
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CDD’s database solved these problems:
The database allows the group to store all of its data in a unified repository, selectively share certain results with specific collaborators, share other results openly with the community, and keep other data private depending on the project and its current status.
Case #4: Pathbreaking research foundation
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Challenge:
The foundation supports research groups spanning several disciplines (small molecule synthesis, animal studies, cell biology, etc.) in a tightly focused effort to develop new treatments for a debilitating disease.
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Specific Problems:
The foundation’s research model encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, but scientists have difficulty fully exploiting each other’s data because they approach common problems from different perspectives. The various participating research groups all rely on different hardware and software, and they are wary of conventional database tools, which require an enormous investment of time to train users. As the composition of the research portfolio changes, the foundation needs to retain and manage previous results so ongoing research can build upon them. The foundation also needs to protect the commercial value inherent in the research data, so promising approaches can be patented and commercialized.
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CDD’s database solved these problems:
The CDD database combines the intuitive ease-of-use of a web browser with the industrial-strength reliability of a conventional database. Hyperlinks steer users where they need to go. A synthetic chemist can upload her data while a toxicologist can easily add his screening results without needing to know the details of the chemical structures. CDD’s database is easy to start using, so researchers readily adopt it as part of a productive workflow rather than view it as a chore. The foundation can easily retain and protect data and support a seamless workflow among its geographically dispersed collaborators.
