Penny for Your Thoughts, and a Dollar for Your Data
The fast and easy path to profitability in biopharma — Scientists can do much more when they have the means to do less
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What’s inside:
65% acceleration in time to market expected if data scientists, scientists, QA, manufacturing and partners had FAIR scientific data in the cloud.
Industry-specific purpose-built clouds can help biopharma companies address concerns about data security and regulatory compliance while leveraging the advantages of cloud technology.
High-Throughput Screening (HTS) offers an ideal starting point for cloud adoption.
ROI checklist and calculator for cloud adoption
Biopharma's Billion-Dollar Opportunity
Recognizing the Need for Change
The biopharma industry faces a daunting challenge: 50-80% of scientists' and data scientists' time is spent on low-level data extraction, cleansing, and manipulation tasks. This translates to $100 million in lost productivity and 1 million hours annually for a biopharma company employing 1,000 scientists and data scientists. At an individual division level, at least $20 million of scientist and data scientist time currently spent on low-value data wrangling could be repurposed to higher-value analysis.
The life sciences industry has been talking about the need to innovate and streamline processes by moving to the cloud for the last decade. Existing scientific workflows are plagued by scattered data, manual processes, and limited traceability, leading to inefficiencies, errors, and hindered progress in drug discovery and development. The journey to cloud transformation begins with acknowledging the need for change and seeking a solution to address these pressing issues.
Only 10% of all scientific data is in the cloud, and 70% of all biopharmas have no scientific data in the cloud.
Companies are 7X more likely to have to repeat experiments due to data issues for organizations without scientific data in the cloud.
$48 billion is lost in R&D inefficiency from avoidable experiment expenditure.
$1.2M in cost for each one-day delay in getting a drug or therapeutic to market.
30% increased risk of not getting a new product to market for each one-month delay.
Despite recognizing the potential benefits of cloud adoption, most organizations still hesitate due to concerns around data security, regulatory compliance, or uncertainty about the return on investment.
By providing real-world examples of successful cloud adoption, presenting an ROI checklist, and showcasing the value of fixing these inefficiencies, we can ease fears and build confidence in the transformative power of the cloud.
Decision Makers & Digital Scientific Data
Deloitte's recent survey of 500 senior cloud decision-makers identified nine strategic priorities for moving to the cloud, shared by life sciences and healthcare organizations:
Increase efficiency and agility
Mitigate business and regulatory risk
Support environmental sustainability
Expand into new markets
Create new operational processes or workflows
Build new product/service revenue
Expand existing product/service revenue
Develop new ideas, approaches, or methodologies
Reduce/optimize costs
IT leaders have expectations and concerns about cloud transformations. Top expectations include faster innovation, accelerating the capacity to change, and creating connections across organizations. However, there is a considerable innovation gap between the desire to implement changes and the ability to execute them. Top concerns involve:
Company IT team might lack necessary skillset (39%)
Fear of control over data and insights (36%)
Ability to protect data (36%)
Deloitte's nine strategic priorities offer a roadmap for cloud adoption in the life sciences industry. By understanding the priorities, including scalability, agility, and cost optimization, organizations can make informed decisions about the best approach to cloud transformation.
Industry clouds are becoming more prevalent among life sciences companies, and they can offer ongoing opportunities to help drive value, according to the results of our survey.
An industry-specific purpose-built cloud, a collection of solutions developed within the regulatory and compliance framework for a specific industry, may be the closest thing to an easy button for chief information officers (CIOs).
Investing in pre-built assets, solutions, and accelerators could help companies derive greater business value, sooner. With more than 40% of life sciences respondents investing between $1 million and $10 million in cloud technology, and 24% expect investments will increase by 20% or more over the next year or two.
Cloud opportunities should extend beyond data storage. This can include improving processes and providing an industry-friendly user interface design and user experience design (UI/UX). It can also unleash the power of industry specific AI/ML use cases and encourage organizations to think differently about how they expand and create new products, how they enter new markets, and how they can help employees collaborate across silos and regions.
Crossing the Threshold with High-Throughput Screening
Failure rates for AI, data science, and digital transformation initiatives can vary across industries, including life sciences and healthcare. Common reasons for failure include lack of a clear vision, insufficient knowledge, inadequate data quality, ineffective collaboration, and resistance to change within the organization.
Biopharma leaders need to think in days and decades. Starting small with one to three use cases allows organizations to test the waters, prove the value of cloud adoption, and scale up gradually. This approach minimizes risks, enables organizations to learn from early successes and failures, and prepares them for a broader, enterprise-wide rollout.
Where can biopharmas start small and win big?
High-throughput screening (HTS) has the potential to accelerate the discovery of higher-quality leads by screening more than 100,000 compounds per day, however this superpower comes with a cost.
Beneath the surface, manual and error-prone processes required for acquiring and transforming large, complex data sets and updating electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) and inventory management systems limit its value. These inefficiencies lead to scattered data, low-quality information, time-consuming data management, reduced screening throughput, errors, and lack of traceability and scientific context.
Optimizing HTS workflows requires leveraging existing infrastructure, increasing output with existing resources, eliminating low-impact manual tasks, increasing flexibility and customization without vendor lock-in, and keeping end-users in a central location.
This is a use case where an industry cloud can optimize existing infrastructure, eliminate manual tasks, and increase flexibility in workflows.
This is also where many teams who’ve identified the opportunity and need get derailed because they do not look at solutions that can effectively scale beyond fixing HTS, or know how to measure the impact or the cost of doing nothing.
Calculating the ROI of Change Management Projects
To evaluate the impact of proposed solutions to improve scientific workflow efficiencies and justify a significant investment, biopharma executives and R&D or Scientific IT leaders should create a comprehensive ROI checklist and calculator.
ROI Checklist:
Time savings
Labor cost reduction
Data quality improvement
Error reduction
Throughput increase
Traceability and scientific context
Intellectual property protection
ROI Calculator:
ROI (%) = [(Net Annual Savings + Additional Value) / Initial Investment] x 100
Estimate current annual costs of manual HTS workflow.
Estimate annual costs of the proposed new solution and workflow.
Calculate annual savings from the proposed new solution and workflow.
Estimate additional value derived from improved data quality, traceability, and scientific context.
Subtract annual costs of the proposed new solution and workflow from total annual savings and additional value derived.
Calculate the payback period by dividing the initial investment by net annual savings and additional value.
Calculate ROI by dividing net annual savings and additional value by initial investment and multiplying by 100.
By creating a detailed ROI checklist and calculator and evaluating the impact of the new solution, you can effectively justify the investment in this technology and make a well-informed decision for your biopharma company.
Real World Example — Impact of the Industry Cloud and New HTS Workflow:
Prelude Therapeutics’ Adoption of The Tetra Scientific Data Cloud
Increased number of compounds screened per week by 4x:
Faster identification of potential lead candidates
Reduced time to market for new drugs
Increased revenue from successful drug candidates
Enhanced competitive advantage in the market
Potential to explore a broader range of drug candidates and therapeutic areas
60% reduction in manual steps and processes:
Cost savings from reduced labor requirements
Improved data quality, leading to better in-silico modeling and analytics
Reduced errors and false positives/negatives, resulting in fewer review cycles and retests
96% reduction in data processing time per run:
Increased efficiency in data processing, acquisition, transformation, and management — enabling faster decision-making and more informed insights
More time for scientists to focus on higher-value tasks, data analysis and interpretation, leading to better decision-making in drug discovery projects
Accelerated drug discovery timelines, potentially resulting in faster time to market for new drugs
Reduced labor costs via process automation:
Implementing the new HTS solution can decrease the number of full-time employees dedicated to data management by 30%, leading to direct cost savings
Enhanced traceability and scientific context for increased efficiency and innovation:
Implementing a robust data management system can reduce the number of repeated experiments by 30%, saving time and resources, and enabling scientists to focus on innovative projects driving company growth
Strengthened intellectual property protection with improved data security, traceability, and harmonization:
Implementing stringent data security measures and well-documented traceability can reduce the risk of intellectual property theft and potential litigation
A well-organized data management system can facilitate efficient patent filings and improve the company's ability to defend its intellectual property rights
These improvements lead to increased efficiency, cost savings, and faster drug discovery timelines. By addressing these areas, companies can significantly enhance their competitive advantage and maximize their return on investment.
A Quantum Leap Forward Worth Taking
Recall the transformative impact of connecting personal computers to the internet, creating a global network that forever changed the way we live and work. Today, the biopharma industry stands at a similar juncture as they consider the power of the industry cloud to revolutionize scientific data management.
Much like the internet connected PCs, the industry cloud holds the potential to seamlessly connect lab instrumentation, SaaS, informatics applications, data science, and visualization tools, enabling biopharma companies to break free from traditional data handling constraints and usher in a new era of innovation and growth.
This transformation requires vision, courage, and a steadfast commitment to change. The rewards are immense: unparalleled time and cost savings, impeccable data quality, minimized errors, and accelerated drug discovery timelines. Biopharma's adoption of the industry cloud will create a vast ecosystem of interconnected knowledge, expertise, and inspiration, fueling Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries and achievements.
The time has come for biopharma to embrace this cloud revolution, ignite the spark of transformation, and pave the way towards a brighter, more innovative future. By connecting like the internet did for PCs, the industry cloud will enable biopharma companies to move at the speed of email, bidding farewell to the days of discovering and developing drugs at a carrier pigeon-like pace.
Biotech’s Still Breathing — Funding Announcements
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Genialis has developed a data science and drug discovery platform that blends computational biology and AI-based methods, merges and models data at the intersection of clinical and translational medicine, allowing big pharma companies to validate targets, predict biomarkers and optimally position novel drugs.
View on: LinkedIn.com
New Funding Raised: $13M, Series A
Round Investors: Debiopharm Innovation Fund (lead), Taiwania Capital Management Corporation (lead), Redalpine, P5 Health Ventures
Growth Focus: Expand its proprietary ResponderID platform; build out its comprehensive collection of clinically validated biomarker models to provide pinpoint diagnoses for virtually every cancer patient.
Press: Business Wire, PR Newswire
HQ: Boston, MA
Industry: Biotechnology
Employee Count: 28
Sirius Medical has developed a tumor localization technology that uses a tiny implanted magnetic seed to precisely mark the tumor and a detection probe to accurately locate the seed during surgery, allowing patients to receive affordable cancerous tumor surgery and improved surgical care.
View on: LinkedIn.com
New Funding Raised: €12M, Series B
Round Investors: Holland Capital (lead), BOM Brabant Ventures, Curie Capital, Team Holmium
Growth Focus: Accelerate the worldwide growth of their product Pintuition and support further product development.
Press: PR Newswire, FinSMEs
HQ: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Industry: Medical Equipment Manufacturing
Employee Count: 38 (19% increase in last 6 months)
ArriVent Biopharma operates a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in manufacturing and commercializing targeted cancer therapies for non-small-cell lung cancer and other solid tumors, enabling healthcare specialists with a drug candidate to better treat cancer patients.
View on: LinkedIn.com
New Funding Raised: $155M, Series B
Round Investors: Sofinnova Investments (lead), General Catalyst (lead), Catalio Capital Management, HBM Healthcare Investments
Growth Focus: Support its pivotal Phase 3 and additional studies of the lead product candidate, furmonertinib, and future pipeline expansion.
Press: GlobeNewswire, FinSMEs
HQ: Newtown Square, PA
Industry: Biotechnology Research
Employee Count: 36
Lookin’ Around?
Dream Jobs in Science & Companies Hiring:
Gilead — Executive Director, Head of US Digital Strategy and Operations (View Job Post)
Promega — Data Engineer (View Here)
Plexium — Associate Director, Bioinformatics (View Here)
Plexium — Director, Computational Chemistry (View Here)
Plexium — Scientist/Scientist II, Informatics (View Here)
Share your company’s job openings with our community of 1900+ life science managers, directors, VPs, and executives by linking your career page in the comments section. We’ll feature your posting in next week’s letter.1
Any, and all views, opinions, beliefs, and/or written statements are expressly my own. Where’s My Flying Car? (WMFC) is not affiliated with any employer or company, and we do this work for free. WMFC’s mission is to serve current, and soon-to-be, leaders at the intersection of life sciences and technology… the folks behind the scenes building the future. WMFC serves as a platform to elevate conversations about scientific data in life sciences and we’ll shine a spotlight on Sciborgs who are maniacally committed to their craft, so we can learn from their wins… and sometimes their losses. No red tape, no politics, no payments to publish… Science for the people. Please comment or DM Kyle Garvin, if you’d like to choose topics we cover in future letters — or even better, request a week to write a guest post. Thanks for reading and subscribing. A toast to you, your loved ones, and your future filled with flying cars.