Benefits
Isosterix has found a number of benefits since adopting CDD Vault, including:
-
Providing a “single source of truth”
-
Speeding time to drug discovery
-
Serving as a powerful tool for startups
-
Supporting collaboration with consultants and CROs
-
Protecting intellectual property
Providing a “Single Source of Truth”
Having worked widely within the world of pharmaceutical research, Rai appreciates the significance of CDD Vault providing what many refer to as a “single source of truth.”
She notes that the alternative too often is a collection of spreadsheets or other forms of decentralized data stores which can make it difficult and time consuming to determine where the most recent data resides.
“With CDD Vault, the freshest data is always just a click away,” Rai says. “The moment new data is uploaded into CDD Vault, it's available to all scientists registered on your CDD Vault.”
This immediacy of data availability, combined with CDD Vault searchability and SAR analysis helps drive discovery.
“New data elicits new ideas, such as how the next molecules might be made,” Rai says. “As a central data repository, everyone on the team can securely access the newest data to guide their work.”
With her long background working with CDD Vault, Rai finds it frustrating when working with organizations that don’t have a centralized repository.
“I’m consulting with a company now that doesn’t have CDD Vault and a lot of time can be wasted looking for data that would be just a click away with CDD Vault,” Rai says. “I recently spent 30 minutes pulling together data that I could have had within moments using CDD Vault. So it can be frustrating to work without it.”
Speeding Time to Drug Discovery
The powerful SAR analysis and robust searchability of CDD Vault helps speed time to discovery.
“The SAR analysis in CDD Vault helps you to think of new molecules and generate new hypotheses for whatever problem you are trying to solve,” Rai says. “In drug discovery you go through iterative cycles of structure, activity relationships. You look for trends. You might say: I need a hydroxy group, but at another position on the molecule. That's my next hypothesis. We improve whatever it is we're trying to improve in that particular cycle of SAR.”
“CDD Vault expedites drug discovery by giving you the ability to quickly visualize your data, and then propose the next molecule to make,” Rai says. “CDD Vault helps in the thinking process. It gives you the ability to sort data and ask questions, and to quickly propose the next, most promising, molecule to make. This saves you from having to make 50 molecules to get to the next iteration of improvement in potency or improvement in oral bioavailability. CDD Vault helps you get to the next step more quickly by querying the data and getting the answers.”
CDD Vault is a Powerful Tool for Startups
After working for a number of biotechnology companies, Rai decided to create her own, initially with just herself as the sole employee, augmented by consultants and a CRO.
From this experience, she suggests that every biotech startup make CDD Vault part of their work foundation, or at least to do so by the time they begin to do their research.
“CDD Vault is a great organizer,” Rai says. “It should be an essential part of any new drug discovery venture because otherwise the data becomes overwhelming in a hurry. You are tracking multiple kinds of data for each compound, and that complexity grows with each new compound. The moment you start making compounds and gathering data, which is what drives your progress, that's when you need CDD Vault. I couldn’t do without it.”
CDD Vault Is Easy to Use: “I Don’t Have Any IT Specialists. With CDD Vault, I Don’t Need Any.”
CDD Vault has long been praised for its ease of use, which is especially important for startups and other small biotech businesses that might not have IT specialists on staff.
“CDD Vault is extremely easy to use,” Rai says. “I don’t have any IT specialists. With CDD Vault, I don’t need any. When I have a question, I just contact CDD and they respond almost immediately, providing all the help and guidance I might need.”
Rai also appreciates built-in protections to ensure data integrity, including automated duplication protection which prevents registering the same compound twice.
Registration of new compounds is simplified through use of custom templates that CDD creates for clients.
“I just send CDD a description of my current program and they create a custom template for me,” Rai says. “With the template, it’s just a few clicks and your compounds are registered into CDD Vault.”
