According to Kalorama, between 40 and 60 per cent of lead compounds fail ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicology) testing, and only 10 per cent of drugs that start clinical trials ever get approved. Overall, this means that 72 per cent of drug development costs are wasted on failures.
This has created a general theme in drug discovery to get much more information about drug compounds earlier in the process, to cut attrition rates by making compounds 'fail faster'.
This involves much more use of computer modeling, high-content screening and miniaturised assays.
Thermo's solution to this is Galileo, a LIMS designed specifically to support in vitro ADMET experiments, allowing users to design, calculate and report data from metabolic stability, drug-drug interaction, protein binding, permeability and enzyme kinetics studies.
The new version, 3.2 now gives users greater control over the assays performed with user-definable study types and customisable calculations.
The new enhancements allow questionable data to be quickly reviewed with a new ability to filter data sets and to flag data based on comments entered during analytical data review.
"Galileo 3.2 expands in vitro research capabilities by enabling the full range of ADMET assays via user-definable calculations," said Dave Champagne, vice president and general manager of Thermo's informatics business.
"We continue to enhance Galileo with off-the-shelf functionality that users need to keep the study design flexible, while providing the benefits of a more standard approach to assay management, analysis, storage and reporting of the data," he added.
In addition to user-definable study types to increase flexibility, Galileo now offers user-configurable decision trees that allow the user to define scenarios under which flagged results require further review.
Templating of design and output parameters, as well as result flagging, eliminates manual actions, saving time and reducing errors for users.
Galileo LIMS is offered as an alternative to manual calculations using spreadsheets, resulting in disparate files maintained in many locations in multiple file formats.
The LIMS enables drug discovery researchers to conduct high throughput in vitro screening and profiling of compounds to determine at an earlier and less costly stage, which compounds might develop into commercially viable therapeutic drugs.
For details on enhancements in Galileo 3.2, visit Thermo's site >here.