ViroCell Biologics: Fueling Tomorrow’s Gene and Cell Therapies

ViroCell Biologics: Fueling Tomorrow’s Gene and Cell Therapies

ViroCell is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) that manufactures viral vectors and genetically modified cells. Their products are used to advance gene and cell therapies in pre-clinical studies and clinical trials.

CDMOs like ViroCell have unique demands for organizing, maintaining, and securing data and inventory. To better achieve this, they have recently adopted LabArchives’ Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN). We recently connected with Alisha Sund, Senior Scientist from ViroCell Biologics, to learn about their experience with selecting and using LabArchives’ Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN).

ViroCell explored several options when looking for an ELN, and drew on past experiences, including with IDBS and Benchling. ViroCell was looking for an ELN that supports small research orgs with a full feature/function set. In their research, ViroCell received a recommendation for LabArchives from a colleague at Quell Therapeutics.

According to Alisha Sund, security and the ability to share data and create workflows are particularly important for CDMOs. LabArchives provides the flexibility and ease of customization required to meet these demands coupled with many unique security features, which make it ideal for CDMOs and other research organizations where security is critical. These features and functions include complete audit trails, page signing, data encryption, IP protection, privileged access, and secure sharing capabilities.

To communicate and coordinate with the companies ViroCell does work for, CDMOs like ViroCell need to be able to share data without giving full access. According to Alisha Sund, “we are still figuring out what structure we need; a flexible system that allows for easy changes to settings, parameters, and workflows is important.” Clients who use LabArchives ELN have many options for controlling data access and offering customizable and limited access to other users.

When asked what solutions or processes the ELN would replace, she said that with a new team and a new lab space, LabArchives ELN will help with planning immediate lab work as well as scheduling experiments to be conducted in the coming months. When she utilized ELNs in previous roles, she preferred IDBS over Benchling because of the interface, though Benchling had a nice approval feature. LabArchives meets both needs, offering an intuitive interface with the approval features she previously enjoyed.

In terms of integrating LabArchives ELN into their workflows and processes, ViroCell is working to integrate LabArchives ELN with JMP statistical analysis software that they utilize. Some of the team is in R&D and thus the ability to integrate with other platforms such as SnapGene to create plasmid constructs and GraphPad Prism allows for flexibility of use to meet diverse needs within the team.

LabArchives is integrated with a number of popular platforms, making it easier to adopt the platform and integrate current workflows and data. LabArchives is part of Dotmatics and integrates with several Dotmatics offerings (including GraphPad, Snapgene, Geneious), and also integrates with other programs such as Microsoft Office products, FlowJo, Blackboard, Canvas, and more.

The key changes that they have noticed are better organization and traceability - experiments are easy to find and link to research outputs, which helps to eliminate duplicated experiments. By comparison, when using OneDrive to organize data it was too easy to delete content and unnecessarily duplicate efforts as data and experiments were difficult to locate.

Some additional features that she felt made LabArchives ELN a good fit for CDMOs are templates that are useful to standardize processes and procedures, page signing for signing off on experiments, and witness signing for approvals. She also highlighted the benefits of Inventory, the LabArchives platform for tracking supply inventories that links to LabArchives ELN to trace reagents and other inventory items and their characteristics (e.g., catalog numbers, lot numbers, expiration dates) and connect them with specific experiments.

Specific features she highlighted include:

• Providing direct links from one experiment to another
• Added traceability, well-suited for cell banks
• Increased efficiency and planning of experiments
• Providing structure in Inventory, makes finding inventory easier
• Helps with pricing and consumables, a need shared by many CDMOs

What would Alisha Sund suggest to CDMOs using traditional research management systems? “You should move to using an ELN to get more organized and maintain better traceability.”

We thank Alisha Sund for their work in advancing important future therapies and for taking the time to help us learn how to best serve the needs of CDMOs within the research community.