Thermo Fisher Scientific has been presented with a Microsoft Corporation 2008 Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Innovation Award in the Discovery and Product Innovation category. The award, announced at the Drug Information Association's (DIA) 44th annual conference, honours best-in-class companies that have made the most innovative use of Microsoft-based solutions for breakthroughs in business processes and practices throughout the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.
Building on the Microsoft software platform, the Thermo Fisher and AstraZeneca application demonstrated a compelling solution that streamlined the early phase discovery process and greatly accelerated decision-making in discovery and drug delivery.
AstraZeneca implemented Thermo Scientific's Nautilus LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) to centralise biochemical screening, map laboratory workflows, and dramatically drive efficiency through superior data management. Built on Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net, Thermo Scientific's Nautilus LIMS helped coordinate global requests, automate workflows and standardise biochemical screening. Within six months of deployment, AstraZeneca recorded a 180 per cent efficiency gain across its laboratories from the centralised screening process.
'Thermo Scientific's Nautilus LIMS allows us to turn our data around faster and test across multiple targets, so chemists can get an answer more quickly. This "centralised screening" approach helps to prevent the progression of inappropriate chemical series, while identifying unexpected leads, ultimately accelerating the research on promising compounds. This process has the additional cost-saving benefit of chemistry and bioscience resources that would have been expended on a failed result,' said Roger Clark, senior scientist in the Cancer and Infection department at AstraZeneca.
