Evolving from Outdated to Optimized Outsourcing

Examples of Dotmatics’ Biotech-CRO Portal in Action

Outsourcing in early drug discovery is not only growing, but also evolving. A recent survey of biotechs and CROs (conducted by Chemical and Engineering News’ BrandLab on behalf of Dotmatics) shows that biotechs are outsourcing a growing range of early-discovery tasks to multiple service providers; as result, they are struggling to find reliable ways to easily and securely exchange data, share project updates, and streamline processes.

In our previous blog, we discussed how the Dotmatics Biotech-CRO portal delivers the perfect outsourcing solution by facilitating quick, secure, error-free data exchange, as well as simplifying project management, monitoring and reporting. But don’t just take our word for it; let the stories of companies who have put Dotmatics’ solutions to use speak for themselves. Below are a few examples of the Dotmatics Biotech-CRO portal in action.

Cereval’s Compound Upload Portal for CROs

Clinical-stage biopharma Cereval works with many CROs in their pursuit of treatments for neuroscience diseases. As such, the company’s R&D leadership wanted to find a research platform that could unite their internal and CRO scientists, while also ensuring security and confidentiality. They chose Dotmatics because its permission controls make it easy to provide internal scientists with full access to advanced functionality such as sketching tools and registration privileges, while restricting the functionality available to CROs. With Dotmatics, Cereval optimized one of their researchers’ most common and cumbersome tasks—compound upload and registration. Before Dotmatics, CROs had to manually upload the compounds they had synthesized. Internal scientists then needed to download the structures, review and approve them, and then register them. With Dotmatics, the process has been streamlined. CROs are provided with a portal for one-way batch data upload. They can quickly upload multiple small molecules or proteins into a registration-approval queue that internal scientists can easily review and directly register. Project codes and aliases help maintain complete confidentiality.

“The option of secure, one-way data upload for our CROs has saved a ton of time for us internally. We can let the Dotmatics system act as an intermediary and don’t have to take on this task ourselves. The process has been really fail-proof. In fact, since implementing Dotmatics, we haven’t had any duplicate compounds!”  

-Hanh Nho Nguyen, Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Cerevel Therapeutics

Debiopharm’s Inter-CRO Stock and Compound Management System

A leader in developing novel treatments for oncology and bacterial infections, Debiopharm engages numerous CROs around the world. Two important tasks that Debiopharm frequently outsources to its CROs are compound synthesis and compound analysis. This results in a lot of moving parts, with compounds being created at some CROs and then being shipped off to other CROs for analysis. Keeping track of all the comings and goings with Excel-based network files was becoming a nightmare. R&D leadership knew they needed a secure web-based portal that would help them manage everything in one place. Dotmatics was the answer. With Dotmatics’ integrated system, Debiopharm can easily keep everything in order, from the stock CROs need to synthesize compounds to the compound-analysis results coming from different CROs.

“Our API stock-management and shipping process is truly ‘ship shape’ now that we’ve implemented Dotmatics. Requests are simple. Stock availability is reliable. And we know exactly where our stock is at all times—whether it’s on a certain shelf in a specific stock room or it’s in transit from one CRO to another.” 

-Jean Richardson, IT Scientist Debiopharm International SA

Charles River Laboratories’ “CRO Lab of the Future”

Charles River Laboratories (CRL) is one of the world’s leading contract research organizations. Their labs are engaged by countless biotech and pharma companies, who rely on CRL to provide top-notch drug discovery and development services. With a long-standing reputation for delivering reliable and high-quality work, CRL didn’t want their continued growth via acquisition to impact their ability to best serve their clients. So, the company has made a concerted effort to position their hundreds of global CRO labs for continued success by adopting technology to optimize and digitize processes and integrate diverse R&D teams and systems. Dotmatics technology has been integral to this initiative. In particular, Dotmatics’ electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) has been rolled out across a number of business units to hundreds of scientists, who have leveraged the ELN to simplify workflow creation, streamline compound registration, and facilitate robust cross-database searches. Dotmatics has been so well received by CRL’s teams that the company plans to roll out additional Dotmatics capabilities to several new departments and countless more scientists. 

“Dotmatics solutions not only help optimize our in-house processes, but they also help us better serve our clients, which we know ultimately benefits patients.” 

-Riannon Hambleton, Director Business Technology Partnership for Discovery, Charles River Laboratories

Learn More

Learn more about the Domatics capabilities these companies used to transform their CRO-collaboration processes from outdated to optimized.

Request the C&EN Survey Report “Optimizing Outsourcing in Early Small Molecule Discovery”

This survey of biotechs and CROs uncovers the latest trends and needs in early drug discovery outsourcing and discusses how Dotmatics can help position both biotechs and CROs for success.

Request the full report - Optimizing Outsourcing in Early Small Molecule Discovery.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar

In this webinar, Dotmatics experts Tobi Oremulé (Principal Application Scientist) and Eric Putnam (Field Application Scientist) review key findings from the C&EN survey and discuss how innovative biotechs have used Dotmatics solutions to optimize their CRO collaborations.

Watch the webinar