Our new partnership with Kytopen, and the future of lab instrument data
Earlier this week, we announced a new instrument collaboration with Kytopen, a leader in the development and commercialization of non-viral transfection tools for genome engineering.
This partnership brings the power of Ganymede’s Lab-as-Code™ platform to Kytopen’s products:
- The Flowfect Discover™, an automated high-throughput screening device
- The Flowfect Tx™, a manufacturing-scale gene delivery device
One of the many reasons we’re so excited to be partnering with Kytopen has to do with how original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) approach data. Together, we’re working to change the paradigm around instrument data, making it more open, accessible, interoperable, and easy to analyze for scientists.
Now that the news has been out for a few days, we wanted to reflect a bit more on the typical OEM data dynamic and why an evolution in thinking is so necessary.
It’s Time for a Change in OEM Data Management
As anyone who’s worked in a lab in the last 10-15 years knows, lab instruments create a lot of data. All that data needs to be entered into some sort of system of record, such as:
- Electronic lab notebooks (ELNs)
- Lab information managements systems (LIMS)
- And more
To meet this rising, organic demand, OEMs have slowly started to move that data into the cloud over the last decade or so. However, generally speaking, that move hasn’t been ideal. While OEMs’ intentions have been positive—they want to help their customers, who are asking for better ways to export data off machines—the typical approach has made accessing instrument data challenging. Historically speaking, OEMs have created proprietary file formats—which often aren’t interoperable with other complex experiment data— or have sent data to closed-off clouds. In some rare instances, scientists might not even be able to download their own data easily.
Uduak Thomas
As a result, biotech companies have a tough time getting instrument data where it needs to go in the cloud. They spend time exporting, cleaning, and preparing disparate data from disparate instrument sources for actual analysis.
Cell and Gene Therapies: Leading the Data Revolution
The traditional instrument data dynamic is changing. This paradigm shift is being led by groundbreaking fields like cell and gene therapy. These revolutionary companies have created new, multidisciplinary, and integrated workflows for R&D and manufacturing. They incorporate data from dozens of instruments, which means they need data to be FAIR:
- Findable
- Accessible
- Interoperable
- Reusable
True to their innovative technology roots, Kytopen is leading the way by approaching data management head-on.
With our partnership, Kytopen and Ganymede are aiming to reinvent how equipment manufacturers approach data, enabling a more interconnected and streamlined drug development process. Soon, Kytopen’s customers will be able to seamlessly integrate data from their Flowfect® instruments with any application and existing data infrastructure via Ganymede’s platform.
In the words of Kytopen’s CTO, Bethany Grant:
"The experimental workflows in cell and gene therapies are highly complex. Our customers are producing a product that requires sophisticated analysis generated from multiple instruments to bring new medicines to patients in need.”
That’s an exciting future for lab instrument data, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to usher it in—one line of data at a time.