Today is International Women’s Day. Please join me in celebrating some of the women who have made significant contributions to our understanding of pancreatic cancer through PanCAN Research Grants.
Over the past 5 years Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have made great strides and the pharmaceutical industry has started applying these technologies in areas as diverse as clinical trial design and the design of DNA-encoded Libraries. Not a day goes by without a new ChatGPT article coming across my newsfeed, so we thought we’d take a look at a class of AI algorithms known as Generative AI (of which ChatGPT is one example).
Over the past few months we’ve been working on a whitepaper to document the state-of-the-art of AI/ML in drug discovery. As part of the preparation for writing this whitepaper, we experimented with different tasks to help answer the question “is AI ready for prime time for a given task”.
In this case, we were interested in finding out if we could use ChatGPT (and other Generative AI algorithms) to mine drug development pipeline information. Our Pharm2Market database contains the pipelines of over 800 drug discovery companies in the US. The process of keeping the data up-to-date involves a lot of manual curation work. So we were interested in looking for ways to apply Generative AI to help extract pipeline information from the websites of these companies and reduce the amount of manual labour required to curate the Pharm2Market database.
In this experiment, we looked at the pipeline of Foghorn Therapeutics. As you’ll see from the transcript of our experiment, the user experience for ChatGPT is “chat-like”. And what you end up with is an iterative “conversation” where you are trying to constantly refine the results you get into something that is usable.
The conversation started with:
What drug development projects does Foghorn Therapeutics have in its pipeline?
Foghorn Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on developing medicines that target the chromatin regulatory system to treat cancer and other serious diseases. As of my knowledge cutoff of 2021, Foghorn Therapeutics had several drug development projects in its pipeline. Here are some examples:
FT-4202: Foghorn’s lead candidate is a small molecule modulator of sickle cell disease (SCD) that targets the fetal hemoglobin (HbF) pathway. FT-4202 is currently in Phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of SCD.
FT-7051: This is a selective inhibitor of the bromodomain and extraterminal (BET) family of proteins, which play a role in regulating gene expression. FT-7051 is being developed for the treatment of various solid tumors and is currently in preclinical development.
FT-8225: This is a small molecule inhibitor of the WDR5 protein, which is involved in the formation of chromatin regulatory complexes. FT-8225 is being developed for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and other hematologic malignancies and is currently in preclinical development.
FT-2102: This is a selective inhibitor of mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) enzymes, which are implicated in the development of certain types of cancer, including AML and gliomas. FT-2102 is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials for the treatment of these diseases.
Please note that drug development is a complex and ever-changing process, and the information I provided may no longer be up-to-date or accurate. It is always best to consult the company’s official website or other reliable sources for the most current information.
Where did you get this information?
As a language model, I do not have access to the internet or any external sources of information. However, I was trained on a large corpus of text that includes various sources of information, such as scientific articles, news articles, and other publicly available sources.
In the case of Foghorn Therapeutics' drug development projects, the information I provided was based on publicly available sources such as the company's official website, press releases, and news articles. It is important to note that my knowledge cutoff is September 2021, so there may be updates or changes to the company's pipeline since then.
The key part of that answer, is the knowledge cutoff date (shown in bold). Which means that any data that they show us might be outdated. So we used the Wayback Machine, an internet archive to see what Foghorn’s pipeline looked like in Sept 2021
Already we can see a number of discrepancies. The project IDs are all wrong, not to mention the targets, indications and phases.
At this part of the experiment though, we wanted to improve the form of the answer, and then work on improving the accuracy of the answer.
Express your previous answer in Foghorn Therapeutics pipeline in json format.
For the drug Target information please include the entrez gene ID for each drug target
Unfortunately, I do not have access to a database that provides the Entrez Gene IDs for the drug targets mentioned in my previous responses. However, I can provide you with a general format for including Entrez Gene IDs in a JSON representation of drug targets:
Here we can see that they’ve generated gene IDs, rather than looking up the appropriate ID, so we next specified where to find the right answer.
You can find the entrez gene IDs here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/
Thank you for providing the source of the Entrez Gene IDs. Here's an updated example of the JSON representation of drug targets with the corresponding Entrez Gene IDs:
{
"candidates":[
{
"name":"FT-4202",
"drug_target":{
"name":"fetal hemoglobin (HbF) pathway",
"entrez_gene_id":"3043"
},
"indication":"sickle cell disease"
},
{
"name":"FT-7051",
"drug_target":{
"name":"bromodomain and extraterminal (BET) family of proteins",
"entrez_gene_id":"6872"
},
"indication":"various solid tumors"
},
{
"name":"FT-8225",
"drug_target":{
"name":"WDR5 protein",
"entrez_gene_id":"11091"
},
"indication":"acute myeloid leukemia and other hematologic malignancies"
},
{
"name":"FT-2102",
"drug_target":{
"name":"mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) enzymes",
"entrez_gene_id":"3417"
},
"indication":"acute myeloid leukemia and gliomas"
}
]
}
And this was key to being able to get the right information. We found that if we specified where to find the right information, ChatGPT would then start improving the answers. When we later went back and specified the URL for Foghorn’s pipeline, we started getting the better answers for the pipeline. The final result (after much back-and-forthing) is shown below:
There are still discrepancies in the results though. In some cases, the system returned “Cancer” for the indications, despite the fact that the pipeline page clearly showed a number of specific cancers — “cancer” vs “uveal melanoma” for example.
Conclusions Although it is possible to eventually get something approximating what you want out of the system there are numerous caveats:
Be as specific as you can as early in the conversation as possible.
Give ChatGPT the URLs of the sources that you want to draw on in order to generate the data that you’re after.
It doesn’t support ontologies yet, which means that the results you get may not be exactly what you’re looking for.
The results highlight the need more open, domain-specific Large Language Models (LLMs).
It doesn’t have a way of citing its sources yet. So when you ask it, “where did you get this data”, it’s not going to pull up the page and highlight the sentence where it got the information.
Double-check all data
The current data cutoff date of September 2021 means that if your conversation requires more recent data, you’re out of luck.
Lastly, what this exercise points out is the need for a common FAIRified data format for expressing drug pipeline information. In my BioITWorld talk on “The Secret Names of Things”, I highlighted the lack of a standard format as an obstacle to making pipeline data easily searchable, and therefore making it harder for potential investors to find likely investments.
Holiday greetings – Throughout this Holiday Season, our thoughts are filled with those who have made our journey possible. To all of you, and especially our clients, we sincerely Thank You for your continued support, your new and continued business and your partnerships this year. We wish you peace and happiness throughout the holiday season.
Year in Review – This year marked the beginning of the return of conference attendees to some of the largest events in the industry. We started the year with the Dotmatics User Group meeting in April – a great opportunity to learn about the latest updates to the Dotmatics platform and to see how customers are using the platform. The Drug Discovery Chemistry conference was one of the first chances to see some of the latest advances in DEL chemistry, Targeted Protein Degraders and AI.
This was also our first year to attend the BioPharma PM conference. This community-driven event brought together project and portfolio managers from drug discovery organizations throughout the US for a week of knowledge sharing sessions, and discussion panels that gave us insights into the challenges that PMOs face in the drug discovery industry. These insights we used to help refine some of the features in our Pipeline Program Management software and helped us connect with the wider community.
BioIT World brought with it an opportunity for us to see the progress being made with the use of FAIR data and AI in drug discovery. It was also our first opportunity of the year to exhibit and demonstrate our new Pipeline Program Management platform and recruit new participants to our Early Access Program.
The BIO conference saw a return to pre-pandemic attendance levels and allowed us to engage the wider drug discovery community. We demonstrated Pharm2Market, our business intelligence platform for biotechs.
We rounded out the year with the Discovery On Target conference in October, where we demonstrated some of the most recent changes to Pipeline including a new workflow system for our Protein Production and Assay Management modules and updates to the notification system. We also showed the new Target and Indication Management module which provides insights into the function of targets in select indications and allows users to construct their own indication models.
Pipeline Pharmaceutical Program Management Software Development [video]
This year we’ve been working with Early Access customers to take Pipeline to the next level. Pipeline is a cloud-based research management system for drug discovery programs that leverages and orchestrates systems you currently have to make the process of drug discovery. Watch Pipeline video :
More transparent and trackable across your organization
More integrated – so that data from multiple R&D systems are easily accessible.
More actionable – so that the appropriate people are notified when significant events occur.
More manageable – incorporating planning, tracking, and purchasing features across the Design/Make/Test cycle.
New Service – As summer came to an end, and budget season came quickly upon us, we launched our new “Roadmap Informatics & Laboratory Planning Service” [video] with a webinar and a new whitepaper. Whether that’s an increase in the number of compounds synthesized, INDs filed, or the number of patient samples processed these roadmaps help companies plan a path to their goals and understand the people, processes, technologies, metrics for success/improvements, and the budgets required to get there.
This new offering has been a huge success to date and we expect it to grow well into 2023 and beyond. If you are interested in learning more about this service, please complete this form for your free consultation
Client Projects – This year’s client projects included:
Diagnostics LIMS System that integrated their order management, EMRs, sample processing, report management, inventory kit management, customer management, billing management, and appointment scheduling. This end-to-end workflow allowed the client to sign up providers, take test requests, manage patient appointments, and process patient samples. use machine learning algorithms to create treatment recommendations, generate reports and manage billing.
DEL Library Design & Screening – For our drug discovery clients, we continued to work on building out a custom suite of tools designed to make it easier to design and create DNA-encoded Libraries and to run DEL screens. This system is integrated with a SampleScan rack scanner to manage the process of library creation, and the registration and inventory of libraries.
Automated Synthesis – We added an automated synthesis module that integrated Dotmatics’ Reaction Workflows, Studies, and Inventory to allow chemists to enumerate reactions, and to determine the availability of building blocks for those reactions. This module also integrated Hamilton VANTAGE liquid handlers and Mettler balances.
Protein Production – We also created a clone order management system that integrated with Genscript’s order management system to make it easier to design target forms and manage the process of ordering, registering, and placing clones into inventory. The system also managed the complete protein production process including registration and inventory of clones, expressions, and purified proteins, and integrated with Dotmatics BioRegister and Inventory modules, and a SampleScan rack scanner.
Membership development – Having been members of SDEE since the founding of Aspen Biosciences in 2009, we were very happy to join with the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), BIOCOM, and BioPharma PM groups this year as well. Through their events, we were able to make many new contacts and connections.
Continuing Trends – Many elderly people still require assistance with shopping and our team continues to assist with this need in our neighborhoods and local areas. Our employees volunteer their time and/or contribute to those less fortunate through community organizations, shelters, and food banks. If you would like to donate to food banks in your area, please consider donating to Feeding America, a network of food banks.
This year we still expect numerous children will be facing a lean holiday season due to workforce instability, so we continue to donate to our local Toys for Tots, a top-rated charity where over 97% of the donations go to their mission of providing toys, books, and other gifts to less fortunate children. If you are able to help through a donation to Toys for Tots this year.
About Aspen Biosciences:
Aspen Biosciences is a leading provider of scientific software/informatics solutions for drug discovery, diagnostics, and cancer research organizations. Our services include informatics roadmaps, custom software solutions, ELN/LIMS implementations, system integrations, and lab automation. Our mission is to accelerate your life science R&D efforts. Learn how we can help your team leverage your existing software tools and platforms to accelerate your drug discovery and diagnostics research efforts while providing customized, cost-effective integrated solutions. For additional information, please visit our website or contact us at mary.canady@aspenbiosciences.com
Come visit our booth…Information, Prizes, Games, Demo’s and More. We will see you at Booth number 624!
This is the year we return to normal… we hope. At least for now we are back in person, and it is exciting to say the least.
On May 3-5, 2022, Aspen Biosicences will be joining the 21st annual event and will be a part of the conversations that connects people, ideas, and opportunities that are advancing research and innovation.
Schedule your appointment. Meet with our CEO, Mark Fortner, to learn how our teams can work together to advance and accelerate your processes……. and solve your drug discovery and diagnostic technical challenges.
Bio-IT World Conference & Expo is the largest conference in the world for drug discovery and biotech IT technology. This conference will be showcasing technologies and analytic approached for solving problems, accelerating science, and driving the future of precision medicine. This event unites the community of life sciences, pharmaceutical, clinical, healthcare, informatics, and technology experts in the fields of biomedical research, drug discovery & development, and healthcare from around the world.
My sister and I grew up in two war zones — Nigeria during the Biafran War, and Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. As a Korean War veteran, my father had witnessed the devastation of war on the civilian population, and the effects of war on the people fighting it. He served in a MASH unit and later in a Neuro Psychiatric (NP) unit and volunteered at an orphanage in his spare time.
As an officer in Bank of America, he spent a significant part of his career as the “Man on the Spot” helping customers out of war zones, and helping them re-start their businesses and their lives.
I was reminded of this recently when I read the latest article about Enamine, the Ukrainian chemicals company, and the recent struggles they’ve faced in keeping their employees safe and resuming their operations. Current estimates indicate that approximately 1/3 of the Ukrainian people have evacuated to nearby countries and another third are internally displaced.
We stand firmly with those struggling to assert their basic human right for self-determination. We stand with the Ukrainians, we stand with the Russian free press who walked out of their newsroom en masse and the thousands of ordinary Russian protesters arrested for speaking out. We stand with the aid workers in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria struggling to keep up with the growing tide of refugees.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve all seen the horrific news from Ukraine. It is all too easy to be overwhelmed by it, and to think “what can I do”.
How can you help?
If you work for a company currently doing business with Russia, or your 401K includes stock in Russian companies, consider divestment.
If you’re in a leadership position at a biotech company, consider signing the pledge.
If you can afford an AirBnB “vacation” in Ukraine, reserve a room now.
If you can give to aid organizations, do so. Here is a list of aid organizations that need your help.
If you can speak out at protests, make your voice heard.
As my cousin Crista’s First Graders recently discovered when they raised money to help a Ukrainian family, even the smallest of people can make a difference in the lives of others.
From all of us at Aspen Biosciences – Pharm2Market
Goodwill * Peace * Cheer * Joy * Hope * Love * Prosperity * Happiness * Harmony
As we all begin to close out 2021 and bring in 2022, we can’t help but reflect on the past and wonder about the future. Throughout the Holiday Season, our thoughts are filled with those who have made our journey possible. We sincerely Thank You all, for your continued support, your new & continued business, and your partnerships this year. Without you, we wouldn’t be here, or be able to help others achieve their goals more efficiently or effectively. We wish you all peace and happiness this holiday season and throughout 2022.
This year brought continued growth for Aspen Biosciences; the launch of Pharm2Market 2.0 and the implementation of customer suggestions that have led to meaningful improvements to Pharm2Market. We currently have four complete biotech communities in the database with increased profiles on over 1200 drug discovery, resource, and investment companies in the communities of San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, and the Mid-Atlantic Region. This year’s improvements include: performance updates, Apple iOS platform support, and improved querying capabilities. Data on biotech communities in the RTP area, Seattle, Los Angeles and in the UK will be released in 2022.
Pharm2Market can help you:
Identify new leads as well as similar leads to your existing customers based on therapeutic area, therapeutic class and target.
Understand the science behind your customers’ business, and how you can best position your products and services.
Use the latest integration with Rocket Reach, LinkedIn, CrunchBase and SBIR to identify the right contacts and understand the fundamentals of your customers’ business.
Stay informed with the latest news and events affecting your customers.
And much more.
About Aspen Biosciences:
Aspen Biosciences is a premier provider of custom software solutions in the life sciences industry, offering products and services to accelerate and scale drug discovery and diagnostic research efforts. In addition to tools such as Pipeline, an app designed by scientists to manage and plan the drug discovery process, and Pharm2Market, a unique business intelligence platform designed specifically for pharmaceutical startup companies, investors and biotech service providers looking to connect with each other, Aspen Biosciences is providing biotech, pharmaceutical and cancer research organizations with solutions to their drug discovery and diagnostics challenges. For additional information, please visit our website or contact us at info@aspenbiosciences.com or at tmurrie@pharm2market.app.
Goodwill * Peace * Cheer * Joy * Hope * Love * Prosperity * Happiness * Harmony
As we all begin to close out 2021 and ring in 2022, we can’t help but reflect on the past and wonder about the future. Throughout the Holiday Season, our thoughts are filled with those who have made our journey possible. We sincerely Thank You all, for your continued support, your new and continued business, and your partnerships this year. We wish you all peace and happiness this holiday season and throughout 2022.
For us, 2021 brought continued growth for Aspen Biosciences with the addition of 7 new team members to help with the increased demand for custom applications, and integrated systems in the drug discovery and diagnostics industries. Throughout this year, the Aspen Biosciences teams have made significant improvements to our existing products as well as began development on a new one:
Pharm2Market, the business intelligence platform designed specifically for pharmaceutical startup companies, investors and biotech service providers looking to connect with each other.
Pipeline, a unique project and portfolio management application designed to orchestrate the process of drug discovery.
Delos, a new software application, in development, to manage the process of generating, curating and publishing reports in support of drug discovery collaborations.
This year we built a custom solution to help one customer design and track new protein constructs. We integrated rack readers with an inventory management system to make it easier for protein scientists to manage protein stocks. We created another application to manage high-throughput compound synthesis and purifications. And a third application to manage custom 3rd party compound synthesis requests.
In the diagnostics space, we created a data warehouse which gathered data from multiple data sources and allowed scientists to construct new machine learning models. We also created a custom LIMS and integrated it with a commercial EMR and a billing system.
As the coronavirus continues in our communities, Aspen Biosciences personnel are still committed to help those who are at high risk and others who need it. In addition to shopping and delivering groceries, our employees volunteer their time and/or contribute to those less fortunate through church organizations, shelters, and food banks. This year we still expect more children will be facing a lean Christmas, so we are also donating what we can to our local Toys for Tots, a top-rated charity where over 97% of the donations go to their mission of providing toys, books, and other gifts to less fortunate children. If you are able to help through a donation to Toys for Tots this year, please visit this link.
About Aspen Biosciences:
Aspen Biosciences is a premier provider of custom software solutions in the life sciences industry, offering products and services to accelerate and scale drug discovery, research, and diagnostic efforts. In addition to tools such as Pipeline, an app designed by scientists to manage and plan the drug discovery process, and Pharm2Market, a unique business intelligence platform designed specifically for pharmaceutical startup companies, investors and biotech service providers looking to connect with each other, Aspen Biosciences is providing biotech, pharmaceutical and cancer research organizations with solutions to their drug discovery and diagnostics challenges. For additional information, please visit our website or contact us at info@aspenbiosciences.com.
Aspen Biosciences has continued to grow over the last quarter with the addition of 7 new team members, to help with the explosive demand for custom applications, and integrated systems in the drug discovery and diagnostics industries. These new team members bring the company size up to 70. Throughout this year, the Aspen Biosciences teams have also made meaningful improvements to existing products such as Pharm2Market and Pipeline while beginning development on Delos, a new application coming soon to the Biotechnology industry.
Pharm2Market: the business intelligence for biotechs platform continues to increase the numbers of unique visitors and subscribers. This business intelligence platform is designed specifically for pharmaceutical startup companies, investors and biotech service providers looking to connect with each other. Use this link to try this application for free. SDEE members receive a $10 discount when using this coupon code: SDEE21.
This year’s improvements include: performance updates, Apple iOS platform support, and improved querying capabilities. Data on biotech communities in the RTP area and in the UK will be released in 2022.
Pipeline: is a unique application designed to orchestrate the process of drug discovery (from target selection, to project planning, assay management and inventory). The development team continues to work with early access customers on the 2.0 release of the software, due in March.
Pipeline System Architecture:
Delos: collaborations between biopharmaceutical companies are a key inflection point in the process of getting new medicines from the bench to the bedside. A key missing piece to the puzzle, which Delos is designed to fill, has been the lack of software to manage the process of generating, curating and publishing reports in support of collaborations.
Delos Architecture:
If you would like to participate in our Early Access Programs, or need technical help in advancing your drug discovery or diagnostics programs, reach out to us at mark.fortner@aspenbiosciences.com.
This Thursday marked 103 years since the end of the The War to End All Wars. In a very real sense though, it also marks the beginning of a war that continues to this day. A war, that until a few years ago, I didn’t really realise we were still fighting.
This is my grandfather, Benjamin Harrison “Harry” Sample. In July of 1918, he enlisted in the Army and reported to Camp Funston, Kansas for basic training. At over 6 ft tall, he was always the tallest man in the room. In the second photograph, he’s standing with the rest of his squad, he’s the tall one in the middle.
Camp Funston, 1918
If you know your history, then you know that Camp Funston was ground zero for the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Before the war, he had been a school teacher in a small town in the boot-heel of Missouri. The men who had enlisted expected to find themselves in the trenches, dealing with the horrors of gas attacks and mechanized warfare. Instead they quickly found themselves dealing with an unseen enemy that was quickly killing thousands of men in the Second Wave of infection. They hadn’t yet made it out of basic training. Ultimately 53,000 Americans would die in combat; but 45,000 would die from the flu.
When my grandfather recovered, the world he came back to was vastly different. My grandmother had managed to survive, but so many others hadn’t. A generation of people in Southeast Missouri had been killed. In my grandfather’s county between 1918 and 1920, 322 people died from the flu. The youngest victim was 2 months old, but the vast majority of people who died were between the ages of 14 and 40. Ultimately, over 675,000 people died in the United States from the flu during the course of the pandemic.
The virus wouldn’t be isolated until 1930. And it wouldn’t be until 2005 that the 1918 influenza virus was sequenced from a sample taken from an Inuit woman who died in 1918.
The flu would become a perennial fixture in our lives, with yearly vaccines whose efficacy varied from year to year. Pandemic outbreaks continued to occur throughout the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s.
The death toll from the flu was for the most part below the level of national attention. We had become used to 10’s of thousands dying every year from the flu. The technology for making flu vaccines hadn’t really changed since the vaccines were first recommended in the 1960s. And the result had been vaccines with a hit-or-miss efficacy. In 2018, the CDC estimated that 52,000 people died from the flu in the US.
The COVID response demonstrated that there was another way. That it was possible to go from a sequence to a very targeted mRNA therapeutic within the space of a few months. And if it could be done with COVID, then perhaps similar vaccines could be developed for other viruses like influenza, Ebola, Marburg Virus, MERS, HIV and others.
New mRNA-based flu vaccines are now entering clinical trials, and hold the promise of more effective vaccines, and perhaps even a multivalent vaccine capable of preventing both influenza and COVID. Recently, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery published a list of the vaccines currently in pre-clinical testing, and in clinical trials.
On this Remembrance Day/Veterans Day we salute the men and women who fought on that battlefield a hundred years ago, and the ones that fight on today’s battle field.
At Aspen Biosciences, we’re proud of the role we play in helping our customers bring new medications and diagnostics from the bench to the bedside.
What led up to starting Aspen Biosciences? I was working for Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) in the Netherlands when my mom and grandmother were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That’s when I became interested in Biotech. Searching for information about pancreatic cancer while waiting at the hospital, I realized how little we know about the disease. After moving to the US, I worked for Lexicon Genetics (now Lexicon Pharmaceuticals) in The Woodlands, Texas. I learned about gene expression, genotyping and using knockout mice for drug discovery. I worked for Pfizer and Takeda in San Diego then decided to start Aspen Biosciences in 2009.
Where did the name Aspen Biosciences come from? There is a large aspen forest in Utah called Pando (latin for “I spread”). Every tree is a clone of another tree, and they are all interconnected via their root system, and communicate biochemically — a sort of biological internet. It’s a visual reminder of what we do — connecting companies to each other and connecting scientists and their data.
Do you have any company news or updates to share? We recently launched Pharm2Market 2.0, with added features making it easier to find the right customers in the right markets. With the addition of the Mid-Atlantic region, users now have access to 1300 biotech, investor and resource companies. We are offering all SDEE members a 10% discount on the first month’s subscription.
You have been an SDEE member for several years, how has it helped your company? My initial reason for joining SDEE was for networking. However, it’s also become a great source of inspiration for new products and services. There are so many great ideas exchanged at the happy hours. The original idea for Pharm2Market was inspired by conversations at SDEE happy hours. Talking with other startup company members, I realized there was a need to connect companies to each other, to help identify resources and partners to help accelerate research.
Tell me about your company. We aren’t a startup, but we feel like one because we work in an agile fashion. We have 50 employees and are hiring more. Our company focuses on implementing systems for companies (ELN/LIMS) and systems integration. Customers teach us how they do drug discovery and we implement systems that accelerate the process for them. Our Pipeline application helps plan, execute and manage their drug discovery research. It shows projects, targets, assays, people, and resources (like inventory). Scientists can use it to plan the assays for a project, and to keep people informed as things progress. Another product is the Pharm2Market platform which is a SAAS solution with hundreds of biotech and pharma companies in San Diego, San Francisco and Boston. It is designed to help find new customers and help better understand current customers by providing information on drug pipelines, targets, pathways, therapeutic areas, contacts, news and financing.
One of the other challenges with local drug discovery startups is just creating awareness about the research they’re doing. SDEE helps me better understand some of the challenges of local companies and identify ways that we can help.
Mark Fortner
Traci Murrie
Aspen Biosciences Blog 