Benchling, the biotechnology cloud R&D platform used by organisations including Regeneron, Gilead and Pfizer, hosted a virtual event on September 14 at 8 am PT / 11 am ET called Drive Innovation from Discovery to Development, where the company announced its entry into the Early Development market, launching new solutions that allow scientists to move from research through development within a single system.
Through the expansion of Benchling’s offerings, the R&D Cloud is designed to accommodate both the flexibility and speed needed for research efficiency, as well as the control and compliance required for regulated processes.
“Given Benchling’s early focus on research, we have been fortunate to witness our customers turn discoveries into products, and support their transition into Development,” said Sajith Wickramasekara, CEO and Co-founder of Benchling. “This customer-led approach to expansion gave us an up-close view of the complex coordination required and how scientific collaboration on a single, unified system can improve speed and quality.”
Getting innovative bioproducts to market more quickly can mean patients receiving new treatments for life-altering conditions sooner, as with the Covid-19 vaccines. It can also mean more food with less energy, enriching consumers’ lives with ethically-sourced products, and businesses reducing their contribution to climate change. Developing such products requires modern technology. Disparate point solutions for electronic lab notebooks (ELN), laboratory information management systems (LIMS), and laboratory execution systems (LES) create silos that exacerbate the inherent challenges of complex collaboration, forcing scientists to spend time reconciling data between various systems instead of surfacing and sharing key insights that accelerate product development.
With over 600 customers across a wide range of company sizes, industries, and scientific use cases, Benchling draws upon customer partnerships to inform its product roadmap.
Benchling customer Editas Medicine was the first to dose a patient in vivo with a CRISPR gene editing medicine, EDIT-101. EDIT-101 is designed to correct a genetic mutation that causes childhood blindness. Christopher Wilson, Vice President, Lead Discovery at Editas Medicine, commented: “As one of the first companies using CRISPR to treat disease, we needed a software that could keep up with the rapidly evolving science of gene editing. We chose Benchling early on, and our two companies have grown alongside each other. With Benchling already in place for research, adopting their new early development solutions helped us transition data seamlessly from discovery through development, and ultimately get potentially transformative medicines into the clinic and to patients faster.”
