Tool addresses biologic registration limits

May 7, 2010 – 5:52 pm by Michael Christel

Scientific software company Accelrys Inc. recently unveiled the world’s first multi-entity, production-ready biologics registration system. Developed from a three-year collaboration with drugmakers including Abbott and Merck & Co., the data tool is designed to help companies overcome the historically difficult IT challenges associated with registering and defining complex biological materials. Accelrys’ database offers templates for eight major biological entities, including yeast, cell line, DNA, protein, plasmid, vaccine, antibody, and siRNA.

I spoke recently with Frank Brown, Ph.D., Accelrys senior VP and chief science officer, to learn more about the registration system and its potential in streamlining the knowledge management process for biologics. Based in San Diego, Accelrys’ roots are in computational chemistry, materials, and biology. In 2004, through its acquisition of data software company SciTegic, Accelrys branched out into the informatics and automation space.

Q: What was the motivation behind this project?

A: It’s the cornerstone of the way informatics works. About 25 years ago, chemical registration was introduced to the pharmaceutical industry. It took a few years to catch on, but your local knowledge about those molecules was pretty wide for several hundred molecules, but not several thousand or tens of thousand or ten million like today.

In the early days, we started to register those materials so they can be shared, and we started to track data across databases and across safety systems. But since they didn’t have a unique ID, there was no way to integrate the data together.

Over the last 25 years, we’ve built many, many systems that drive off of that primary index number, which is a unique number given to the unique chemical structure. That’s the same parallel going on with biologics. Now they’re starting to create all these pure-biology, hybrid-biology structures that are going to become drug candidates.

It is very important to repeat the same process we did in chemistry – give the biologic a unique ID to be able to track it, be able to link the safety codes to it, be able to find it. Some of these things are very expensive, so if you can find it and share it across the organization, that is a big value.

There’s been recent announcements that some companies have made IP and gone to market, only to later find they violated the IP of another company in the biologics arena and had to pay more than one billion dollars. That’s a really important thing to avoid going forward.

Q: How much harder is it to avoid when dealing with a biologic?

A: It’s very difficult. Chemistry is very discreet, “It is this molecule.” Biology is not that discreet, “It’s kind of like this molecule.” Tracking biologics is essential. The primary ID is so valuable. Today, they track it with their notebooks and maybe some other system, but not really in a systemic way.

Q: How is Accelrys’ approach different?

A: We looked at all the base elements – DNA, cell lines, plasmids, RNA – and said these are the building blocks for these other more complex entities. We describe very carefully the basic systems and then combine them with special architecture to describe how these complex entities are made up of these other simpler entities. That’s the secret, adapting to those new modalities that we don’t even know yet.

We started this three years back before anybody was thinking about it. We used a vehicle to develop this software in a pre-competitive marketplace with several large pharmaceutical companies.

Our customers put a lot time into helping describe the problem from multiple angles. One company really stressed antibodies, one customer really stressed vaccines and siRNAs, and one company really stressed the ability to create hybrid siRNAs and peptides. We got a good look at the width of the issues facing the industry going forward in this rather complex thing called biology.

By doing that, we were able to create a very flexible and modular approach to begin with. It took more time than to just say, “Let’s start coding.” We took a lot time to get used to the requirements, to find the architecture, and then move through. We actually released three production versions. The first commercial version is moving forward, but it’s already been through three cycles with three large pharmaceutical companies.

These customers were highly engaged, they gave us the specs, they worked on figuring out a way to put them all into the box together, and they were very good at testing and rolling the software out for us.

Q: Can you explain how your tool works for the typical registration project?

A: Right up front, we give a customer a batch ID. There’s two different kinds of IDs; there’s the batch – what you’re actually making and going to test – and then if that batch is in fact unique and has never been registered before, then you’ll get a parent ID that will also be associated with it. That way if you make a second batch of it and it’s the same parent, you’ll get a different lot.

The idea is that you get this lot first, and as you’re going on and passing and purifying, you may not have enough information to adequately describe that entity at the very beginning, but you can at least track it to this unique lot ID. Then at the end, you’ll say, “Hey, I have enough information, I’m going to fill out my registration form.” And the machine will say if the biologic entity is unique or is not.

Q: Who benefits from a system like this the most?

A: The two main ones that benefit are the head of research, because now they can actually protect the IP and track the data, use that data for decision-making; and the head of IT, because he has to solve this problem and most likely either has a one-off, home-grown system or has no system available at all to solve this problem. We’re creating a cost-effective alternative to in-house systems development.

It’s really important to the legal department because they have a way to track back to the inception. The manufacturing process can look back and say, “How did they do it in discovery?” It’s also a big issue for health and safety. If they don’t have a way to track and know exactly what that entity is, it’s hard to get a good safety label.

Tags: Accelrys, biotechnology