Amgen, Foghorn Therapeutics, and Revolution Medicines Share Screener Experiences
October 13, 2021
Jackie Thrasivoulos & Ada Yee
Our 2021 Virtual Genedata Screener User Meeting (SUM) on October 7 was attended by scientists and IT professionals from over 30 organizations from across the pharma and biotech world including companies such as Amgen, AstraZeneca, Evotec, Ginkgo Bioworks, Moderna, Pfizer, and Roche.
This year’s presentations covered a lot of ground, from using Screener for innovative research applications in both small- and large-molecule research, to product roadmaps for both Genedata Screener and Genedata Imagence.
Scientist Stephen Hesler and Director of Research Informatics Joe Marchionna from Foghorn Therapeutics kicked-off the meeting with an in-depth look at how Screener enables hit triage using affinity selection-mass spectrometry (AS-MS). Screener makes it easy to compare protein-small molecule affinities using this powerful, label-free approach. On the large molecule side, Principal Scientist Ryan Case from Amgen detailed how he and his colleagues use Screener for BLI data processing and analysis in a novel workflow for building more developable bispecific antibodies (read our interview with Ryan here).
The benefits of using Screener Assay Catalog to provide biological context for both simple and complex screening results were highlighted by Rosemarie O’Shea, senior director of Information Sciences at Revolution Medicines. Assay Catalog integrates with an organization’s data infrastructure and allows controlled definition and annotation of all assay protocols. Rosemarie showed how Assay Catalog helps Revolution Medicines streamline data reporting, simplify assay architecture, and achieve more specific data querying. Overall, Assay Catalog increases efficiency and ensures access to experimental information for project teams throughout the organization.
While there have been many advances in lab automation, the push for more modular, autonomously running yet responsive laboratory automation continues. Genedata lab automation expert Sascha Fisher offered a framework for thinking about research process automation. He noted how Screener already automates much of data analysis and supports laboratory automation through real-time monitoring and automatically triggered analysis sessions. Looking to the future, Sascha provided insights into how Screener will soon support automation of the full research process.
Screener User Meetings are a unique opportunity for our user community to come together and share experiences and feedback about our platform with our scientific support team. During our virtual coffee break, Scientific Account Manager Renee Emkey led a Q&A session and Screener Scientific Account Managers from the Boston office gave live demonstrations of the most-requested features we’ve now added to Screener.
Rounding out our presentations, Matthias Fassler, head of Product Management for Screener and Imagence, provided a preview of where we are headed with Screener 19 and Imagence 5. Enhancements to both solutions will bring to market major new features including:
- Expanded functionality for HT-Flow to accommodate complex experiments such as cell line profiling.
- Increased Efficiency for combination screening enabling even higher throughput.
- Simplified organization of processing templates.
- Brand new visualizations, including a matrix-view compound gallery.
To learn more about the 2021 Virtual Genedata SUM, we encourage you to contact your local Business Account Manager for more details. Needless to say, we look forward to our next Genedata Screener User Meeting in 2022.