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Teresa J. Thuruthiyil,
Vice President of Investor and Public Relations for Symyx
Technologies Inc., talked to PharmaWeek
about their recently introduced product for optimizing
drug development—Symyx’s Benchtop System.
Symyx’s
Benchtop System is one of the company’s more recently
introduced tools designed to accelerate R&D while
reducing costs. “We took the basic concept of
high-throughput experimentation and the idea that
experiments can be done in parallel, in small
quantities,” Thuruthiyil explained. “And we designed
the Benchtop System to increase testing capacity by
10–100 times with a new, modular offering that combines
hardware and software in a scaleable package.”
Symyx
has drawn customers from the life sciences market for the
better part of a decade, but it started out working in the
chemical sector. “We were drawn into the life sciences
space when researchers from pharma and biotech companies
pointed out the work we were doing for the chemicals
industry was similar to the development work they were
doing,” Thuruthiyil said. “They thought we could
provide tools and systems to streamline their preclinical
pharmaceutical development processes.”
Symyx’s Innovation Garners Accolades
Symyx’s
systems have become increasingly modular, culminating in
the debut of the Symyx Benchtop System at the Association
for Laboratory Automation’s (ALA) LabAutomation
conference in January. There, it received ALA’s New
Product Award Designation. “Our customers wanted a
software-driven system to replace the rote work scientists
were doing, such as weighing, measuring, and
dispensing,” Thuruthiyil noted. The Benchtop System can
handle an entire experimental procedure on one deck.
The
Benchtop System addresses the need for greater capability
at a much lower price point than Symyx has previously been
able to offer. From a capital planning perspective,
Thuruthiyil said the Benchtop System has been well
received. “What customers have been most excited about
is the easy set up—the system is shipped, plugged in,
and ready to go with a focused application,” she
explained. “They also love the fact that they can expand
it over time and integrate it with other systems in their
labs.”
Researchers Need Not Apply Themselves
Symyx
Benchtop Systems arrive preconfigured with software to
perform a specified application (the list currently
includes catalyst impregnation, coatings and
characterization, crystallization, excipient
compatibility, forced degradation/stability, liquid
formulations, and solubility). “The
Benchtop is equipped with integrated chemistry, software,
and instrumentation protocols to design and automate an
entire set of experimental procedures around any one
application,” Thuruthiyil noted. “It requires limited
investment, enabling researchers to be up and running in
no time. Everything they need is either on the deck or in
the software.”
A
unique feature of the Benchtop is its ability to integrate
liquid and powder dispense. Symyx’s acquisition of
Autodose SA (late last year) enabled it to add
powder-handling equipment to its existing liquid-handling
platform. “The Benchtop System is the first piece of
equipment where we have combined those two
technologies,” Thuruthiyil said.
“Our
goals are making the most use of space and time,
increasing the probability of success and getting more
drugs to market faster,” Thuruthiyil explained. “Merck
& Co. has been working with Symyx for many years. They
are beginning to see the benefits in terms of a healthier
pipeline—it’s more robust than it was just a few years
ago, when they initially introduced these tools into their
research labs.”
Breaking Bottlenecks
Thuruthiyil
used forced degradation testing as a case in point: It’s
a procedure carried out by pharmaceutical companies to
simulate the effects of extended shelf life on a
prescription drug’s physical form and active
ingredient—what are
the effects of heat, shaking, et cetera? “I remember
when a customer described—in painstaking detail—how
they used to manually fill the vials
one-by-one—measuring and dispensing material before
subjecting the samples in a serial fashion to a whole
battery of different tests (shaking, heating, mixing,
freezing),” Thuruthiyil recalled.
The
Benchtop System’s forced degradation and stability
testing platform automates the otherwise-tedious process,
improving consistency and efficiency of testing through
minimization of human error. The Benchtop System saves
time because scientists can program it to run overnight
and perform tests in parallel. “Researchers can check in
the morning to see what happened when the pharmaceutical
preparation was this cold, shaken for this long, et
cetera, and then decide what further testing is
warranted,” Thuruthiyil explained. The nonstop workflow
breaks the bottleneck formed by performing stability
testing serially and manually—which could take weeks.
“A pharmaceutical company once told me that the Benchtop
System’s forced degradation application has completely
changed their stability testing,” she recalled. “They
are simply thrilled by the automated approach.”
Positive Results Spawn Further Innovation
Since
the Benchtop System’s January 2007 launch, Thuruthiyil
said the market response has been good. “The first
product sales were within the pharmaceutical industry,”
noted Thuruthiyil. Symyx plans to add further applications
to the Benchtop System.
“We’re
one small step in the process to get better drugs to
market faster,” Thuruthiyil concluded. “It’s a part
of the enormous venture our customers are engaged in.”
Symyx
Technologies, Inc. was formed in 1994 to service the
R&D community. The company has a two-pronged focus on
R&D: innovation and execution. From an innovation
perspective, Symyx provides research services and
technology development. On the R&D execution side,
Symyx provides tools and software to facilitate faster,
broader experimentation. Visit www.symyx.com
for more information about Symyx and its offerings.
Copyright
2007, Cambridge Healthtech Institute. All Rights Reserved.
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