Critical Data Considerations for All Lifecycle Stages of a Biotech Startup

Biotech Startups Have a World of Opportunity … And We Are Here to Help You Succeed

Biotech startups are highly respected—and prized—for their ability to nimbly innovate. Bright minds come together with a common goal and a tight focus. The result can be discovery of innovative compounds and therapies—and on a timeline measured in months, rather than the years typical of larger pharmaceutical companies.

Biotech Startup + Big Pharma = Great Synergy

While much has been written about the agility of startups to go diving into the realm of drug discovery and emerge with high-value results, Big Pharma has its own set of powerful capabilities, including bringing new products from discovery through clinical testing to market, and their expansive channels for distribution.

Startups—as well as mid-sized biotechs already well established—can reap the benefits of partnering with larger pharmaceutical companies . . . or continue to grow on their own with the vision of entering the realm of Big Pharma on their own. Either way, a strong, yet flexible informatics platform is a key to success.

In this white paper, we look at the key lifecycle stages of biotech startups, and demonstrate how the CDD Vault technology can help you from rapid startup, through discovery, collaboration, and commercialization/exiting—all while providing the industry-leading security required to protect your priceless intellectual property.

What Our Customers Say

Before we begin explaining how our company helps you succeed, let’s hear from some people who have already discovered that on their own:

“CDD was love at first sight for me. It is so intuitive to use that I picked it up in one day before I even received any training. The system is great for managing both structured and unstructured data.”
- Iwan Grin, Ph.D., Lab Manager, University Hospital, Tübingen, Germany


“CDD Vault is a great choice for a start-up and has scaled well as our Research enterprise has expanded rapidly. Our scientists find the protocol and GUI structure to be excellent. From my perspective as a data analyst, the API has enabled me to code and automate complex custom analyses and automate integration and sharing of chemical and biological data for presentations which has been an exceptional time-saver for the laboratory researchers.”
- Scott Silveria, Principal Data Analyst, Arcus Biosciences


“Getting CDD Vault at an early stage pays dividends. Among other things, having clean data that is easily shareable is very valuable down the road when it's time to form partnerships with other organization.”
- Jarrod Medeiros, Director of Informatics & IT, Casma Therapeutics

Supporting Your Full Lifecycle

In one sense, that quote above from Jarrod Medeiros, tells the story of our full lifecycle support for startups and similar organizations. In his first sentence he says “Getting CDD Vault at an early stage pays dividends.” And then he hits upon how we also help with the endgame, when he says “Among other things, having clean data that is easily shareable is very valuable down the road when it's time to form partnerships with other organization.”

Also Great for CROs, Academics, and Beyond

While the focus of this white paper is on the immense value that CDD Vault brings to biotech startups, the same value proposition holds for a range of R&D enterprises—new and established—including:

• Biotech & Pharmaceutical. Empower drug discovery and development with a dedicated platform for biologics and small molecules. CDD Vault is trusted by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies for over a decade.
• Contract Research Organizations. Create multiple projects containing thousands of compounds with ease. Share chemical, biological, and structure-activity relationships (SAR) data directly with clients while maintaining privacy of each project.
• Academics. Capture diverse research data in a central, secure location for perpetuity. The intuitive software allows rapid onboarding to ensure continuity across projects.
• Consortia & Collaborations. Support natural, seamless collaborations across multiple organizations to accelerate discovery while maintaining data security.
• Agritechnology. Store and organize pesticide screening data and experiment protocols. Manage plant species, breeding and genetic outcomes, and general plant husbandry.
• Consumer Goods. Register novel formulations and link to manufacturer ingredients. Create recipe protocols to automatically calculate costs and required yields.

A Quick Overview of CDD Vault

CDD Vault is a complete informatics platform hosted through an intuitive web interface. It helps project teams manage, analyze, and present data for biotech companies, CROs, academic labs, research hospitals, agrochemical and consumer goods companies. Created by biotech experts, CDD Vault provides powerful attributes, including:

• Easy Onboarding. Built for drug discovery teams, the modern web interface is intuitive for beginners and powerful for experienced users. Migrate your data easily without requiring any IT expertise.
• Powerful. Access all your research data from any modern web browser. Search for any experiment or explore your results in SAR tables and plots. Filter, color code, and highlight substructures to quickly screen for patterns.
• Built for Teams. Your whole team can mine data in a single repository avoiding redundant work and sloppy file versioning. You have full control on what data is private and what is shared with collaborators.
• Multi-Domain. CDD Vault provides cross-discipline tools for both chemists and biologists. Chemical structures registered by chemists and assay results captured by biologists reveal structure-activity relationships.
• 100% Secure. CDD Vault protects your intellectual property against accidental loss or disclosure. Trusted by major pharmaceutical companies, CDD Vault is highly secure with SSAE 16 Type II certified cloud storage for our private cloud, software as a service offering.
• Affordable. A hosted solution that is cost-efficient for academic laboratories, startups, and mid-sized biotech companies. CDD Vault comes with great in-house support and scales up as your team grows.

Working with CDD Vault

CDD Vault provides the integrated tools you need to support the full lifecycle of drug discovery, including:

• Activity and Registration
• Visualization
• Electronic Lab Notebook
• Inventory

Activity and Registration

CDD Vault is the ideal informatics platform for chemical registration, assay data management, and SAR analysis, and makes it easy to organize drug discovery data and collaborate across project teams. You can use CDD Vault Activity and Registration to:

• Import Data. Import large sets of chemical and biological data in a few steps. Register small molecules, plasmids, antibodies, peptides, and more. Manage them efficiently in CDD Vault so you never lose track.
• Search. Search through assays and compound libraries. Filter precisely using methods like Boolean logic, hit thresholds, substructure and Tanimoto similarities. View cross-discipline results that highlight structure-activity relationships within a single table.
• Analyze. Normalize and generate concentration-response curves, plate statistics, assay quality metrics, and heatmap visualizations. Measure and assure the quality of your results for better discovery.
• Collaborate. Work efficiently with internal and external project team members. Share selective data sets through an intuitive web interface quickly.
• Report. Customize reports within CDD Vault to easily collate chemical and biological data of interest into a single table. Share these results with your project team and even export as Excel documents or SD files.

Visualization

CDD Vault is a dynamic analysis tool for drug discovery data. It lets you plot and analyze large data sets to find interesting patterns, activity hotspots, and outliers. With publication-quality graphics, it is easy to illustrate and share results across project teams. You can use CDD Vault Visualization to:

• Interact. Mine your data for hits, outliers and interesting relationships with interactive, dynamic histograms and scatterplots. Each CDD Vault plot can be customized for extra clarity.
• Filter. Filter large data sets by compound properties and experimental results. Set a range of values and see how your visualizations are affected in real time.
• Sort. Your plot data is mirrored in a table you can use to sort by molecular properties or experimental results. Selections are reflected simultaneously in the table and the plot for seamless exploration.
• Calculate. Use CDD Vault to set up equations to automatically calculate derived results. Easily and routinely generate summary information, normalized activity, and compound selectivity.
• Compare. Use CDD Vault to set up equations to automatically calculate derived results. Easily and routinely generate summary information, normalized activity, and compound selectivity.
• Publish. Add your analyzed compounds as a special collection in your CDD Vault. Export your visualizations as PDFs for presentations and reports.

Curves Module

The CDD Vault Curves module is designed to help you efficiently analyze and visualize complex data. Curves streamlines your data processing and expresses complex trends concisely and visually. Whether you're a biologist or a chemist, this tool will make your research more impactful.

Curves helps speed drug discovery in a number of ways, including:

• Integration. Curves creates an automated workflow from raw inputs to plots, saving time and reducing errors. You can even import unprocessed data straight from your plate reader.
• Presentation. Curves gives you full control over display options, including our color-coding feature that enhances visual clarity, enabling you to easily share, explore and export visualizations.
• Comparison. Curves makes it easy to search across assays to evaluate trends and overlay topics crucial for identifying promising compounds. With the click of a button you can add multiple molecules or protocols to a single plot.
• Collaboration. Curves enables you to securely share visualizations in a project-based environment. Our Plot Comments feature allows direct communication about specific data points. Color coordination for each curve makes it easy to visualize differences.
• Curves Overlay. Our Curves Overlay feature gives you the ability to compare multiple results in one plot, with enhanced color coding.
• Summary Curves. Our Summary Curves feature lets you convey results over time with a single toggle for quick decision making.
• Curve Fits. Using our Curve Fits feature, you can analyze, selecting from a number of curve fit algorithms, including including our newly optimized bell-shaped fits for complex biological responses.
• Calculations. You can use Curves to generate plots using raw, normalized and calculated values. Whether you're applying potency, selectivity, ADME, toxicity, PK or PD data, Curves will help you develop a clear, compelling, visual data story.Curves overlay for PROTACS plot

AI Module

Our AI module creates a strong data foundation within CDD Vault, allowing you to harness advanced AI capabilities in a secure environment. Benefits of using our AI module include:

• Increased Efficiency. Our AI algorithms dramatically speed up research and analysis, allowing you to quickly process vast amounts of data to enhance precision. This helps ensure accurate predictions and optimized formulations, reducing late-stage failures.
• Data Driven Insights. Our AI uncovers patterns in large data sets, potentially revealing new drug candidates and mechanisms.
• AI-powered Searching. Our AI-powered searching gives you the ability to swiftly explore compounds and patents within ChEMBL, SureChEMBL, and Enamine, as well as the CDD public database.
• Bioisosteric Suggestions. The AI module generates bioisosteric suggestions to help identify ways to enhance potency and improve pharmacokinetics of your lead compounds.
• Computer-aided Design. The computer-aided design built into our AI module allows you to rapidly search for group similar structures, property predictions, and other values. Our AI module focuses on synthesizable molecules.
• Comprehensive Patent Database Search. Our comprehensive patent database search capabilities help ensure that you're working with viable candidates, enabling you to easily evaluate the novelty of your structures.
• API Access to Our Deep Learning. We offer API access to our deep learning technology, allowing you to integrate AI capabilities into your own workflows and build custom predictive models.

In essence, our AI module is designed to streamline your processes, enhance your insights and accelerate your path to breakthrough discoveries.

The AI module provides a wealth of settings to speed drug discovery

Inventory Module

CDD Vault has an integrated inventory system for your compounds and reagents to help you stay informed of the current status of your inventory whether in-house or shared externally. You can use CDD Vault Inventory to:

• Debit. Allocate resources individually or all at once from within CDD Vault. The amount remaining for each batch is automatically calculated.
• Track. Capture compound details like chemist, vendor, date, purity, location and even analytical data files. Avoid bottlenecks and pre-order compounds before they run out.
• Locate. Easily find where your compounds and reagents are stored or see who last checked them out.
• Barcode. Track your inventory much more efficiently with barcodes. CDD Vault assigns unique alphanumeric strings and easily retrieves one or many resources from a single search.

The CDD Vault Inventory module brings additional functionality to further streamline laboratory inventory management. The inventory module offers powerful features that significantly enhance efficiency:

• Advanced Search Functionality. Our advanced search functionality enables rapid location of samples, reagents or compounds, and support structures, using searches and queries across custom fields, all while remaining integrated within your other CDD Vault modules for comprehensive data access.
• Customizable Alert System. Use our customizable alert system to notify you of low stock levels and approaching expiration dates. You can create custom alerts based on specific laboratory needs, proactive inventory management, and regulatory compliance.
• Location-based Sample Association. Our location-based sample capability replaces traditional box-based systems with flexible location tracking, allowing for the creation of custom nested locations, such as freezer rooms, shelves and racks. This provides you with a clear way to optimize storage space utilization.
• Unique Identifier Assignment. The Inventory module can be used to assign an unique identifier to each sample. This includes using custom fields for tracking specific sample attributes and real-time updates accessible via secure web-based interface.
• Adaptable Across Research Domains. The Inventory module is adaptable across various research domains, including chemistry and biology. For chemistry, Vault inventory provides comprehensive compound documentation, chemical library organization and hierarchical tracking from parent compounds to individual samples. For biology, Vault inventory provides logging with biological materials, detailed tracking for cell lines and tissues and customizable metadata fields.

In summary, the CDD Vault Inventory module is designed to enhance research efficiency while maintaining data integrity and accessibility.

The Inventory module brings precision visibility to inventory control.

Electronic Lab Notebook Module

CDD Vault is the ultimate electronic lab notebook (ELN), integrated directly with the chemical and biological assay data repositories and our full analysis and visualization environment. Designed for project teams, you can archive and search all of your experiments with ease and collaborate securely. You can use the CDD Vault ELN to:

• Capture. Document your research using text, tables, images, and files. Include product synthesis, assay development, and other diverse content. Add your observations inline.
• Work Together. Collaborate on CDD Vault notebook entries, share annotations and mentor your teammates in real-time. You can customize ELN forms to enforce your business rules within your team.
• Search. Search and filter through your CDD Vault ELN entries. They are print friendly when you need a physical copy in the laboratory.
• Protect. Your research is valuable. Protect it with legal compliance and audit tracking. Witnessing workflows ensure sufficient information is captured in each entry.

Our ELN module provides updates to make our ELN even more collaborative and efficient. New features include:

• Customizable Experiment Templates. Our customizable experiment templates give you the ability to create structured frameworks for any experiment type and seamlessly integrate text, tables, images and files. This helps ensure consistency and reproducibility across projects.
• Advanced Annotation Tool. Our advanced annotation tool allows users to collaborate in real time with shared annotations. This means they can add critical observations directly within experiments and customize workflows to fit specific research needs.

These new features complement our existing powerful capabilities such as rapid data retrieval, a robust search and filter functions make finding information quick and easy.

The ELN module provides the ideal mechanism for seamlessly documenting research.

Lifecycle Part 1: Setting Up Data Infrastructure for Success

A good beginning is essential to success in any biotech pursuit. With the exception, perhaps, of Big Pharma—those established companies with portfolios of products generating revenue—R&D efforts within pharma are driven by the need to succeed early and big. Whomever provides the funding, whether for a startup or an ongoing concern, will have a keen interest in seeing steady, and preferably rapid, progress toward the drug-hunting goal.

CDD Vault is designed for smooth and rapid deployment. Our goal has always been to give researchers the informatics platform they need to shepherd an idea from concept to clinical trials and beyond. This is why our products are so easy to use, and so tightly integrated. We want to enhance—not hinder—research efforts.

What Our Customers Say

While we can say that we’ve designed CDD Vault to get you off to a roaring start, it may be more helpful to hear from our customers who have already experienced the enormous benefits of launching their efforts using CDD Vault. Here’s what some of our customers have to say:

“Twenty of our biologists and chemists participated in a side-by-side test, and all twenty voted to go with CDD Vault.”
- Adam Kallel, Senior Director of Computational Chemistry, Plexium

“Redbrick selected CDD Vault because it fulfilled all our technical specifications, was user-friendly and inherently flexible.”
- Andy Hogben, Managing Director, Redbrick Molecular

“We looked at many options for a chemistry database. CDD is an economical and effective solution: The flexible web-based interface without the need for internal IT support fits our small company requirements very well. And CDD is fun to work with.”
- Scott Thacher, Ph.D., CEO, Orphagen Pharmaceuticals

“Our biologists and chemists can use CDD Vault comfortably after minimal training—just an hour or so. It's browser-based, with a very logical interface, which definitely helps in usability.”
- Cen Gao, Ph.D., Computational Chemist & Drug Designer, Acerand Therapeutics

“We used CDD Vault at AstraZeneca, and it worked so well that we required some of our CROs to also use it. CDD Vault is popular because of its flexibility and ease of use. So, when starting our own company, it was natural to use CDD Vault, and we’re really happy that we did.”
- Jeffrey Albert, Ph.D., Founder and Director of IntelliSyn

Challenges Faced by Biotech Startups

Biotech startups, and similarly focused R&D operations, typically face the challenge of long setup times for deploying an informatics platform. Time—and financial resources—is lost on purchasing and setting up expensive infrastructure that is difficult to use, and that requires specially trained IT staff (or costly third-party service organizations) to manage.

Security becomes another concern as protecting intellectual property is absolutely mission critical to any R&D organization. Yet many informatic solutions are disjointed and aren’t built with security designed in at the root level. Data must be secured in storage—as well as in transit. Without unified security designed into the solution from inception, providing the security required can be costly, risky, and uncertain.

Scalability is another challenge startups face. Startups need to be agile, adding resources—either with direct headcount, or through use of CROs or other partnerships—fluidly and securely. Scaling with other solutions can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

How CDD Resolves the Challenges

CDD Vault was designed for easy deployment. This means you can be up and running within 90 minutes. It provides a unified “single version of the truth” for chemical data, biological data, or a combination of both. It is fully maintainable with no additional IT personnel or resources, which is a major budget saver. And it easily scales as your organization grows. It’s ease of use makes it affordable, with no additional fees for support and training.

Critically important: CDD Vault is designed with multiple layers of integrated security. We call it Vault for good reason. Your data is safe. When it comes time to collaborate with CROs, or in any other ways share data, CDD Vault allows you to do so on a granular basis. Your partners and collaborators see only the data they need to perform their work. You control what is seen and what isn’t.

The good news is that if you aren’t happy with your existing system, it’s easy to switch to CDD. Our support team can help you migrate your data.

Lifecycle Part 2: Supporting Discovery

When it comes to science, discovery is everything. That’s why CDD Vault is created with an ease of use that helps speed the discovery process. The everyday value of such efficiency is illustrated with something Dr. Jeffrey Albert, Founder and Director of IntelliSyn said, in describing how much easier CDD Vault is compared to other tools he has worked with.

"For example, if we want to set up a new model or even a new collaboration, we don't need to have dedicated IT infrastructure, which also means we don't have to wait a week or more to get things set up. We can do it ourselves in real-time, and the resulting output is pretty close—or identical—to the capabilities that we had when working inside major pharma."

This contrasts with having to work with less flexible systems, in which change requests had to be routed through layers of IT support groups.

"In cases like that, the lead time between identifying a problem and getting a solution could run anywhere from a week to never. This is frustrating when you know you could do the same thing with CDD Vault in a matter of minutes, or at longest a single day."

Centralized Repository for a Single Version of the Truth

CDD Vault integrates with your existing systems, and provides the all-important single version of the truth—a centralized, easily used and searchable data store for molecules, reagents, assays, and whatever other data you want to store.

Some systems make it difficult to load information, so too often data is held in noncentralized locations. This problem multiplies when chemists, biologists, and engineers respond to a difficult to use system by finding their own storage methods.

The efficiency of having CDD Vault as a centralized repository is described well in real-life terms by Adam Kallel, Senior Director of Computational Chemistry, Plexium.

“We now have the ability to put all of the data in one place,” Kallel says. “And it doesn't matter what kind of information we’re storing. We can store PDF files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints, assays, DNA bar codes, all of these things, and they all get indexed, and they're all searchable. The ability to store whatever we need, and have it all searchable is hugely important, greatly enhancing efficiency.”

Emphasizing the value of having a single version of the truth, Kallel adds:

“When people used to store data on Excel spreadsheets and on shared drives, the big concern was always: Is this the most current data set? Or is it sitting on somebody’s hard drive? With CDD Vault we know exactly where to find our data and we can know it is the most recent version.”

What Our Customers Say

Here’s what some of our other customers have to say about the efficiency and ease of use of CDD Vault:

"We had Excel sheets all over the place and data from different projects that were just separated in different folders and after a while, it got to the point that it was just hard to manage. We chose CDD, and we’re really happy with the service and the cost and the way the database is evolving."
- Ruo Steensma, Ph.D., Director of Chemistry, Orphagen Pharmaceuticals


"I have evaluated different systems during my 25 years in the biotech industry. For us, the main factor in choosing CDD Vault was the ease of implementation—how intuitive and easy the system is to use. Sometimes you get systems that are very powerful, but only one person who is trained can use it. Most of us like systems where it's so easy to use that it doesn't require a big learning process to get value from it."
- Julio Medina, Ph.D., and CEO, R2M Pharma


"Five years ago, our lab tested 20 compounds a year with no way to handle 200. Today, with CDD’s software, we can fully process 3,000 new compounds per year and advance the best compounds to late-stage development."
- James McKerrow, M.D., Ph.D., University of California San Diego, CDD Scientific Advisory Board

Multi-Vault Storage with Unified Search

CDD provides the option of deploying multiple vaults. This has proven popular with organizations that want to store molecules in one Vault, chemical reagents in a second Vault, and perhaps cell lines in a third, and DNA-encoded libraries in a fourth. While a single CDD Vault can be used to store all of the above, and more, from an operational point some organizations choose to work with multiple instances of CDD Vault. The cross-Vault searchability of CDD means that regardless of how many Vaults are used, they can all be searched as a single, efficient, entity.

Unifying Data from Chemists and Biologists

Chemists and biologists have differing needs, yet both benefit when they can access the information they need from CDD Vault, which eliminates the inefficiency and roadblocks of having different types off systems for each discipline.

CDD Vault supports the needs of each discipline because it makes it easy to define new protocols, add new data fields, register both molecules and biological entities, cross reference batch information and ELN entries to help their research. The flexibility means they can make the changes they need on the fly, without requiring the intervention of technical expertise.

Data Visualization and Analysis

The big goal, of course, is to convert data into insights. CDD Vault helps you do this with an intuitive and powerful set of visualization and analytic tools.

From the CDD Vault dashboard, you can view molecule and experimental data while tracking updates up to the minute. With a single click, you can search data, import data, and manage your collaborations. CDD's relational database automatically associates bio data with molecules. Related information such as batches, plates, experimental data, or files appear alongside the structure. With a single click, you can perform a chemical substructure or similarity search, giving you immediate access to data around additional related molecules.

This view is customizable, with Boolean query capabilities for potency, selectivity, and other properties you define. You can easily add and remove data columns until you have your ideal SAR table. Have a collaborator not using CDD or want to do further analysis with a different tool? Two clicks export your data to an Excel or SD file. It's also easy to batch import data into CDD. Simply select the fields from the flat file you'd like to upload, and CDD imports the data.

Using the CDD Vault lets you use private and external data smarter. It's easier to selectively share data without sacrificing security. All data within a CDD Vault belongs to one or more secure projects. Scientists only have access to projects that are relevant to them, thereby only seeing data pertaining to their experiments. Put simply, projects allow you to mine aggregated data when you want to with whom you want to with just a few clicks.

What Our Customers Say

“With CDD Visualization, we can overlay multiple assay curves for a single compound into one graph. This allows us to see the assay variability of the same compound between different runs, or to compare behavior of multiple compounds in different runs. Using different colors for each run, we can easily see the difference, and identify patterns.”
- Cen Gao, Ph.D., Computational Chemist & Drug Designer, Acerand Therapeutics


“The Vault’s powerful and flexible system not only facilitates rapid compound registration from our external medicinal chemistry teams but also seamlessly integrates this information with a wide range of in vitro and in vivo testing results. This enables rapid assessment of the developing SAR across multiple dimensions; everyone appreciates how well the system works while requiring virtually no internal IT support.”
- Jim Lanter, Ph.D., Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Arkuda Therapeutics


“There have been several benefits in shifting to CDD Vault, from outsourcing the technical aspects of running the database to having a robust user interface with a competent technical support team. In addition, having access to a panel of in-built tools that allow the first analysis of data to occur directly within the CDD Vault database has been very useful in supporting our project.”
– Dr. Andrej Trauner, Project Manager in Discovery Research, Bioversys AG


“CDD Vault is a great choice for a start-up and has scaled well as our Research enterprise has expanded rapidly. Our scientists find the protocol and GUI structure to be excellent. From my perspective as a data analyst, the API has enabled me to code and automate complex custom analyses and automate integration and sharing of chemical and biological data for presentations which has been an exceptional time-saver for the laboratory researchers.”
- Scott Silveria, Principal Data Analyst, Arcus Biosciences

Lifecycle Part 3: Supporting Collaboration

Collaboration is an essential part of the pharma industry, which is why Collaborative is part of our name. CDD Vault was created with collaboration in mind. And, most importantly, it was created with secure collaboration in mind. Using CDD Vault, you can provide CROs, academic partners, other pharma companies, and others secure, granular, access to your data.

The security of CDD Vault means that one of your chemistry CROs can register a compound to your Vault, while a biology CRO can upload assay data on the compound, with each party tightly restricted in what they can see and do. The Structure Masking feature of CDD Vault means a biology CRO, for example, only sees the compound ID, but does not see the chemical structure.

CDD Vault is securely accessible from anywhere. Data from any source can be uploaded and managed easily in one CDD Vault, allowing groups to privately organize, track, and mine research data gracefully.

You can designate precisely who has access when and to which data, enabling secure collaborations in ways not previously possible by better controlling who can or can't access data, all while maintaining a single scalable Collaborative Drug Discovery database.

Along the way, all data movement is secure, as it is encrypted, and done directly with CDD Vault. This means no e-mailing of spreadsheets, with all the potential for interception or compromise that comes with that. All data within the CDD Vault is protected by our industry-leading layers of security.

Jennifer Johnston, Ph.D., and Co-Founder of An2H Discovery, provides a great example of the powerful collaboration that can be achieved using CDD Vault.

“We have CROs all over the world. We have people in China, Ireland, France, Scotland, England. And then in the US, we have people in New Jersey, San Diego, New York City, Michigan, and Boston,” Johnston says. “CDD really allows me to control access to the database, where I can have my specific CROs enter their data directly into the database. So, for example, let's say we have a new SAR compound that my chemist here in California has designed. People in China will make those compounds. Those people in China then can enter them, register them into the database. That then triggers shipment of compounds to our CRO in New Jersey to then run biochemical assays on the new compounds.

“That biochemical data then gets entered into the database, and my medchem consultants can go and log into the CDD and see what's going on with the SAR they designed from both the compounds that have been made and registered, as well as what's the data that's coming out in our biochemical assays.

“At the same time, the lab in Ireland can enter patient sample data, as well as cellular assay data that we're using for compounds that have already been through our biochemical assays. So we kind of have it, you know, rolling through with compounds, biochemical assays. Those compounds then get shipped to Ireland, we do those in our patient assays, and then that gets added in and we do our SAR cycles that way.”

What Our Customers Say

Our customers value the ease and security with which they can use CDD Vault for collaboration. Here’s what some of our other customers have to say:

“CDD easily allows us to securely collaborate, while keeping some data private, all in one system.”
- Ellen Berg, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Eurofins DiscoverX

"CDD Vault is a lifesaver. We really needed a way to capture the data we were creating and be able to share and analyze it — before we were capturing data on spreadsheets."
- Malcolm Kendall, President & CEO, Indel Therapeutics, Inc.

"It’s a great tool for mining and sharing data with collaborators. I’ve used a couple of other programs, but they don’t put everything together so intuitively."
- Mary Lynn Baniecki, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School

Lifecycle Part 4: Securely Sharing Intellectual Property with Investors, Partners, and Buyers

In addition to helping humanity, one of the biggest reasons for starting a biotech company is to turn research into creation of IP that can not only help others, but can generate revenue to reward past efforts and fund future work. When a significant discovery is made, there are multiple paths our customers have taken, including:

• Filing Data with the FDA. When moving toward clinical trials, filing paperwork with the FDA or other regulatory agencies can be an arduous process. CDD Vault simplifies the process through its central repository, the ability to access just the data requires, and the fact that the data has already been cleaned. Clean data is essential. We’ve seen spreadsheets where multiple different characteristics were contained within a single cell, and in which cell values and nomenclature differed between spreadsheets. CDD Vault ensures capture of clean data.
• Selling Compounds. Many of our customers discover interesting compounds which they sell to larger pharmaceutical companies, while continuing the search for additional interesting entities.
• Selling the Company. Some of our customers have been acquired by larger pharmaceutical companies, including Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.
• Going IPO. Others have taken the route of expansion through an initial public offering of stock to fund expansion of their research efforts.

Bringing Order to Due Diligence

Whether registering data with the FDA, marketing compounds, selling the entire company, or going public through an IPO, due diligence will be an integral part of the process. CDD Vault makes due diligence a breeze. Everything is already in one place. If selling just a subset of discoveries, the items offered for sale can be easily brought into a separate, securely isolated, group for permissioned access by those performing due diligence. You can use CDD Vault to create your own digital deal room. Here’s how one of our customers described using CDD Vault for due diligence:

"We use CDD Vault as a data room for our investors. Just as we do for CROs, we can create an isolated space for the investors and diligence teams to access only the data we want them to see, and we can organize it however we want. This one-stop shop for our data saves a lot of time and energy, as well as increasing our compliance. Moreover, it's completely searchable, and so we spend much less time trying to remember who, when, and where specific data was generated, and no longer have to figure out how to find it."

When selling your entire company, CDD Vault makes it easy to transfer your IP assets. Just assign full access upon completion of your company’s purchase.

In contrast, we know of instances in which companies—without CDD Vault—had to spend significant time combing through nearly 100 different Excel spreadsheets, de-duplicating and cleaning data just to begin the due diligence phase. When you have someone interested in purchasing assets, you don’t want to waste time with version control over disparate hard drives, thumb drives, and other distributed devices. Multiple spreadsheets can create a nightmare for version control, as multiple spreadsheets can have data on the same molecule—but with different results. CDD Vault keeps everything in a powerful, yet easy to work within, central repository.

Protecting Intellectual Property with CDD Vault Electronic Lab Notebook

A crucially important element of due diligence is the ability to document time and date and detail of each step in the discovery process. Many companies falter here because of disorganized, decentralized, and incomplete lab notebooks—paper and digital. CDD Vault solves the problem with seamless integration between its database and ELN. Scientists can drag and drop data directly into an ELN entry, then import the data into the registration system, all the while maintaining a traceable link.

While it might not seem like something as simple as ease of use could make a difference in protecting your intellectual property—the crown jewels of any biotech organization—a real-life example from Adam Kallel, Senior Director of Computational Chemistry, at Plexium, illustrates the point. Kallel notes that ELN compliance is especially important for patent data and protection of intellectual property.

"100% ELN compliance means that our intellectual property is protected, whereas before, it sometimes wasn't. You have to be able to show documentation for patent protection, and some of our scientists weren't keeping their notebooks up to date—just because the old ELN was so difficult to work with. Having everyone in 100% compliance is a great relief for all of us. I really appreciate the ease of use that CDD brings to ELNs because as part of my responsibilities I used to have to serve as the ELN police, running around making sure everyone was in compliance."

Kallel stresses how ease of use can make a big difference with ELNs:

"The CDD ELN system is so much easier for our people to use. Our previous ELN system was very formalized and required the chemists to use it in a specific manner, so everyone, including the biologists, appreciate that CDD Vault allows them to just drag and drop spectra as PDF files. It lets them put in the reaction scheme just by sketching it in with Marvin. And it's much easier for compliance. Our previous ELN system was so cumbersome and difficult to use, that not all of our ELNs were always up to date. With CDD Vault, our compliance has gone up to 100%."

Exceptional Security Meets SSAE 18 SOC 2 Type II Attestation Standards

What Our Customers Say

Here's what some of our customers say about the efficiency of CDD Vault and its ELN for bringing together data to share with partners, investors, and due diligence teams should you decide to license or sell a finding, or your entire company:

"CDD Vault provides a centralized system where the entire team can view and compare compounds side by side. We can focus on meaningful discussions and not worry about data being in different places. It's also easy to put together presentations for investors because all the data is already there."
- Gabriel Gracia, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Kurome Therapeutics

"We were spun out of academia and didn't have any data tracking system. With CDD Vault we are now able to compile all results in one place and compare different compounds on the same page-really useful! The ELN is very beneficial as well. We can easily prepare a slide deck from the well-organized data to present to investors and partners."
- Joanne Babula, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Ridgeline Therapeutics

"Chemical and biological data are the most important internal asset for an R&D company. It is crucial for us to update our research operations and improve the collection and sharing of data. CDD Vault makes sure that our data is secure, searchable, and shareable."
- Dr. Reto Naef, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO, TOPADUR Pharma AG

"Using the CDD ELN as our official lab notebooks has had a great impact on all of us. We started out with another online lab notebook service, but it was a bit time-consuming and complicated, which meant no one was entering their data. Since we've switched to CDD, all of our employees and consultants are up to date on the lab notebook, and it's a resource that I routinely use when working with people in Ireland, or China, and I need to look at data outside their work hours. Using the CDD lab notebook function has provided us with a fantastic transformation."
- Jennifer Johnston, Ph.D., and Co-Founder, An2H Discovery

We're Here for Your Complete Journey

Collaborative Drug Discovery is here for your complete journey. Big Pharma loves startups because startups and other small research companies—are nimble, driven, and led by passionately brilliant scientists. Big Pharma wants you to succeed so they can purchase your molecules, IP, or your complete organization.

We're here to help you from day one through your first big sale, and then your next big sale. We have many repeat customers who have used CDD Vault to create—and sell—one company, and then come to us again as they prepare to launch their next.

CDD Vault, with its native ELN, tight security, and ease of collaboration, is the ideal informatics platform upon which you can work your way through the full lifecycle of a startup. We'll help you hit the ground running, capture your data, convert data to insight and product, and provide the documentation required for due diligence when the time comes to sell or file... a compound, or your company.

This blog is authored by members of the CDD Vault community. CDD Vault is a hosted drug discovery informatics platform that securely manages both private and external biological and chemical data. It provides core functionality including chemical registration, structure activity relationship, chemical inventory, and electronic lab notebook capabilities.