Wednesday, April 30, 2008

EXECUTIVE LEVEL SESSION

DRIVING THE INTEGRATION OF INFORMATICS TO SUPPORT DISCOVERY & DEVELOPMENT

Co-Located With 

2:10 Chairperson’s Remarks
Kevin Davies, Ph.D., Editor-In-Chief, Bio-IT World

2:20 How the Three Pillars of Agility in Research Informatics Support R&D Productivity
Juergen Hammer, Ph.D., MBA, Global Research Informatics Director, Global Head, In Silico Sciences, Nutley Head, Group Research Information (GRI), GRI Liaison to Pharma Research, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc.
Does the relatively high investment that increase the efficiency of drug discovery reflect the true informatics needs of drug discovery organizations today? For example, our process biology concept contributed to increased efficiency via request handling, routine analysis flows and results databases, and the possibility to integrate and share results company-wide via gene and target-centric portals. However, significant value-add observed over several years resulted mostly from research informaticians who rapidly customized analysis flows – often manually and with some trial and error - according to scientific problems and disease context. The results were scientific discoveries (reagents, targets, biomarkers, compounds) as compared to more traditional laboratory efficiency increases. Despite a higher value proposition, these complex scientific computations were mostly “one-offs” lacking scalability. In an effort to better balance our informatics efforts towards these value-adding activities, we introduced an operational model that combines scientific excellence with flexible operations and the use of informatics agility platforms. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of this model

2:50 Dynamic Delivery of Services Through Just in Time Application
Chris Waller, Ph.D., Senior Director, Chemical Sciences Platforms, Research and Development Informatics, Pfizer Global Research and Development
The last few years has seen a focus on the greater adoption of a service oriented architecture philosophy within the software development community of practice. The migration from legacy two-tier systems to n-tier systems with distinct middle tier services has necessitated an era of application deconstruction. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is all about “verbs” from my group’s perspective (e.g., register, query, display, etc.), and we have filled our mid-tier with these valuable reusable encapsulated services. As a technology manager, this work is appealing from an application development and support perspective. However, as a solution provider, whose value to the organization is tied very tightly to the business value delivered by my services, this work has had limited impact. This last statement has both positive and negative interpretations in that off-loading services from thick clients into the mid-tier should have no beneficial or detrimental impact on the end-user experience if the work is done properly. Having laid the foundation in the middle tier, we are now refocusing our attention back on the client. This presentation will review my vision to create business process focused applications that deliver services to the end-users in a flexible and dynamic manner.

3:10 Growing ABCD in the Research & Early Development World
Edward P. Jaeger, Ph.D., Director, Research & Early Development Information Technology, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research
This talk will highlight recent developments in ABCD, an integrated drug discovery informatics platform developed at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. ABCD is an attempt to bridge multiple continents, data systems and cultures using modern information technology, and provide scientists with tools that allow them to make informed, data-driven decisions. The first phase of ABCD focused on decision support (data warehousing, retrieval, analysis and visualization) and met with great success, becoming an indispensable tool for more than 1,200 users across all J&JPRD research sites. The system consists of two major components: a data warehouse, which combines data from multiple chemical and pharmacological transactional databases, designed for supreme query performance and a state-of-the-art application suite, which facilitates data upload, retrieval, mining, and reporting. Chemical intelligence, performance, and analytical sophistication lie at the heart of the new system, which was developed entirely in-house. ABCD has delivered on its promise of simplifying data assembly, delivery, comparison and decision-making. It has also driven business process change to create more consistent and better-documented data for discovery analysis. We have now embarked on the development of a new global transactional system that will replace the legacy operational data stores. This presents us with several compelling advantages: an ability to create a common ontology used across the transactional and decision support layers, a simpler, more streamlined and more robust ETL, and a radically different end-user experience through the use of a single, unified application front-end. Indeed, ABCD utilizes a common framework for the entire research data life cycle, including processing, upload, mining, analysis, visualization and reporting.

4:00 Management of Non-Clinical Study Data
David M. Sedlock, Ph.D., Director Research Systems, Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc.
The generation of pre-clinical data presents a unique problem for researchers related to data creation, storage, access, and reporting. These data are generally part of a development portfolio consisting of both GLP and non-GLP studies with different data handling requirements generally in place for each study type. This presents a conundrum when looking at overall data management needs due to differing requirements for system validation, archiving strategies, etc. The presentation will look at this issue in some detail to examine ways to address the problems encountered when attempting to integrate these disparate data types.

4:30 Building Bridges Across the Divide
Ingrid Akerblom, Ph.D., Executive Director, Merck Research Labs IT, Clinical Development
To achieve the promise of Biomarkers to transform discovery research and increase our ability to provide patients value through targeted medicines, there must be a focus on building integrated knowledge across the entire drug development cycle. In addition, there is increased recognition that much of this knowledge exists outside the walls of the pharmaceutical industry. We are piloting integration solutions involving both internal and external partners across several domains such as Clinical Development and Discovery Research to determine how to derive the most value from information connectivity. The successes and the challenges will be discussed.

5:00 Panel Discussion: INDUSTRY OVERVIEW

INTEGRATION OF INFORMATICS IN SUPPORT OF DISCOVERY, DEVELOPMENT & PRODUCTION - WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

Panel Moderator: Joe Cerro, President & Founder at The Schooner Group, LLC
Panelists: All of the above speakers

Discovery Track | Development Track | Product Demonstration | Birds of a Feather Breakout Discussions