The last few years have seen a huge push in biologics drug discovery, with over 200 approved drugs on the market and hundreds of new products in the pipeline. While the successes have been huge (biologics accounted for six of the top eight drugs by revenue in 2016), the failures have been plentiful and the drug development process can be singularly challenging.
One of the key issues for biologists is the sheer volume of data they鈥檙e dealing with. If you鈥檙e developing a small molecule drug, it鈥檚 relatively easy to understand its chemical composition 鈥� the compound, after all, has most likely been created in a lab. Biologics, however, are large and complex molecules with an intricate structure.
Typically, each compound requires genetic sequencing at various stages of the development process, with a view to ensuring it is stable and hasn鈥檛 undergone harmful mutations.
Demand for specialists
鈥淚n biologics drug discovery the main currency is sequencing, whether that鈥檚 a sequence for DNA or RNA or a protein or peptide sequence,鈥� says Andrew LeBeau, senior manager of biologics marketing at Dotmatics. 鈥淭hose sequences are how we biologists understand these molecules 鈥� when they鈥檝e mutated, and how the changes we make can affect their activity. So drug discovery is essentially a process of refining the sequence, which leads to the structure, which leads to the function of the biologics.鈥�
With so much data being generated, managing and analysing that data is often beyond the scope of a lab scientist. This has led to a high demand for specialist bioinformaticians.
鈥淏ioinformatics tools have tended to be the remit of the bioinformaticians and computational biologists,鈥� says LeBeau. 鈥淎 lab scientist might get some data from their experiments, get to a certain point in analysing it and then find they don鈥檛 have the tools or the skills to go to the next stage. So they have to bring their work to a halt and ask a bioinformatician to continue the analysis for them.鈥�
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By GlobalDataThe scientist then must wait hours or even days for results, interrupting the flow of research.
鈥淲e think that鈥檚 a really inefficient way to do science in general, and certainly in the drug discovery industry, where every minute counts,鈥� says LeBeau.
Speedy sequencing
Dotmatics, a scientific informatics company, recently updated one of its tools with a view to redressing this problem. Vortex for Bioinformatics, a data visualisation tool, has been around since 2016 and is currently used by a wide range of biologists. The latest release brings data management within the purview of ordinary lab scientists.
鈥淎ll scientists in my view need tools for analysing and interpreting data, and part of that is visualising data in graphs and charts and tables,鈥� says LeBeau. 鈥淥ne of our big focuses with Vortex is to make it a self-service tool 鈥� it can be used by scientists who just need half an hour of good analysis, so they can make a decision and move on.鈥�
Following the latest enhancements, Vortex can quickly process large data volumes. As LeBeau explains, time is money in the drug discovery industry, and it鈥檚 crucial to do your analysis as fast as possible.
鈥淲e have improved the visualisation and computation performance, so now you can load millions of sequences into Vortex and scroll through it easily, managing what鈥榮 on the screen at any given time,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can do very large sequence alignment and sequence clustering in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee.鈥�
Several new features have been added too. These include manual sequencing editing capabilities; improvements in the sequence annotation capabilities; sequence search capabilities; and various functions specific to antibody research, such as tools to identify and number the complementarity-determining regions (CDRs).
Rather than treating biologics as a single class of drug, the tool intrinsically understands different biological data types and strives to meet the challenges of different research areas.
鈥淭here鈥檚 been a tendency in the industry to lump all biologics together, but really biologics is lots of different types of drug discovery 鈥� if you鈥檙e working with antibodies it鈥檚 different to working with small peptides or vaccines,鈥� says LeBeau. 鈥淪o the tools we provide have to be more specific for each of them, and I think this version of Vortex is a major step along the way.鈥�
Making sense of the data
Of course, if complex bioinformatics is now accessible to the average lab scientist, we might wonder what happens to the bioinformaticians. LeBeau says that rather than rendering them obsolete, Vortex actually frees them up to focus on more creative endeavours.
鈥淗umans will never be taken out of the cycle, not in my lifetime anyway,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat we鈥檙e trying to do is provide the tools and capabilities so each type of user can do what they鈥檙e best at 鈥� the lab biologist uses self-service tools to get their results, and the bioinformaticians can develop new algorithms rather than performing routine analysis.鈥�
He points out that, while biologists are now producing reams of data, we鈥檙e currently much better at generating the data than we are in extracting knowledge from it.
鈥淭here鈥檚 still a huge amount of work to do in terms of understanding how biology works and how we can generate computational algorithms to understand the data,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e want to free up bioinformaticians to attack that huge volume of data and make sense out of it.鈥�
Since Vortex has scripting capabilities, the bioinformaticians can code new algorithms into the tool and make those available to regular biologists.
鈥淏iologists don鈥檛 need to understand the details of that algorithm 鈥� they just need to know how to do the analysis, and what buttons to push to get results,鈥� says LeBeau.
Future evolutions
Over the next few years, LeBeau thinks there will be a greater need than ever for tools of this kind. While chemistry software is already a relatively mature market, biology software has typically relied on open sourcing and is only now beginning to catch up.
鈥淲ith the demands of high volumes of data, the need for commercial grade software in biology has really evolved,鈥� he says. 鈥淐ompanies are moving towards more consistent systems, so we鈥檒l need to focus not just on individual tools but on the ways they integrate with software from commercial vendors.鈥�
He adds that biologics drug discovery is changing rapidly, meaning Vortex for Bioinformatics will need to evolve with the times. As a result, Dotmatics will continue its existing strategy 鈥� engaging heavily with customers, and supplementing its own developmental roadmaps by asking users what they need from the tool.
鈥淓very week we hear about a new type of biologic, and CRISPR is a huge potential therapeutic,鈥� says LeBeau. 鈥淪o Vortex is something we鈥檙e very happy with now, but we鈥檝e got a lot more to do to support different types of biologics drug discovery. We need to stay aligned with what our customers are doing every day.鈥�
