Lundbeck joins with Elsevier to help manage R&D data

Denmark's Lundbeck has signed an agreement with information business Elsevier, that aims to help organise the masses of scientific data it has available, and make drug research more productive and efficient.

The companies have created a big data project that creates a comprehensive database of chemistry and bioactivity to help its research into psychiatric and neurological conditions.

They said the new deal is based on Elsevier’s Reaxys information service that quickly retrieves literature, compound properties, and chemical reaction data.

The companies have identified that one of the challenges facing the industry is managing and using the vast amount of data that is available to researchers.

The fragmented nature of life sciences R&D – which often involves having dozens of labs with hundreds of scientists scattered across different countries – can make it very difficult for firms to know what experiments have already been conducted.

As a result, researchers frequently end up unnecessarily duplicating experiments already done by their colleagues.

Even when experimental data is captured, this information is not often available to other research teams, leading to wasted time and resources.

Lundbeck and Elsevier said the project will help by removing ‘silos’ in internal data repositories to increase accessibility and sharing.

Researchers will also get improved access to chemical and biological information from Reaxys and its Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry database to support research,

The overall goal is to accelerate R&D, and save researchers time and prevent them duplicating each other’s work.

Ludovic Tranholm Otterbein, director of research informatics and operations at Lundbeck, said: “Our goal is to develop therapies for complex brain diseases. To achieve this, we need to further refine our analytical capabilities around drug discovery and get even more value from our existing data by reusing information we’ve generated over the years. The challenge has been to break down our internal data silos and increase data interoperability so that this could become a reality.”

Cameron Ross, managing director, Life Science Solutions at Elsevier, said: “We’ve drawn on our decades of experience with data management and taxonomies to develop solutions to make the lives of researchers as easy as possible and help them spend less time searching and more time innovating.”