Posted on December 4th, 2018 by Christy J. Wilson in Pharma R&D
With its groundbreaking work in developing antibody-drug conjugates, antibiotics, anti-coagulants and anti-cancer therapies, LegoChem Biosciences was already doing important research before joining The Hive. But the advantage of being a part of the Hive program – which gives specially-selected participants access to Elsevier’s R&D solutions – has been to help this innovative company accelerate and optimize its efforts. Here’s how Elsevier’s tools have helped LCB through every step of drug development, from research to IND filing.
Reaxys: A critical tool for chemists
The chemistry database Reaxys has probably been the most valuable tool for the researchers at LCB, who have found its design to be user-friendly and especially important for finding chemical synthesis data. Dr. Sei-chang Ahn, executive director, at head of process center, says “Nowadays, there is so much chemical data available from the various platforms, but it is critical to select the right data at the right time from this flood of information; much of it is just garbage. Reaxys has provided the solution for this.”
Dr. Ahn notes that the ‘limited to’ and ‘exclude’ buttons in the Reaxys search are especially helpful for efficiently narrowing results down to what he needs. He also loves the ‘synthesis planner’ function, which is a feature he says he has not found on any other platform.
“I have read an article that says, ‘AI won’t replace chemists, but chemists who use AI will replace those that do not.’ I would rather say ‘Reaxys won’t replace chemists, but chemists who use Reaxys will replace those that do not.’”
Getting to a deeper level of search with ScienceDirect and Scopus
“The Elsevier solutions I have mainly been using are ScienceDirect and Scopus,” says senior research scientist Dr. Joey H. Oh. “I need to search many references for setting up methods of antibody-drug conjugation and validation. ScienceDirect provides me lots of books and papers I need, and helps me quickly find relevant information with ‘ScienceDirect Topics’. The best program to monitor research groups working on same field with us is Scopus. I can easily access documents citing our papers by Scopus, and Scopus always provides a higher citation count than the other journal websites.”
Dr. Jungmi Lee and Dr. Jaeho Lee use Scopus and ScienceDirect to reduce their time spent searching, and have found that they make a deeper level of search possible. “As a project manager (Dr. Jungmi Lee) and project leader (Dr. Jeaho Lee) in drug development, especially in the pre-clinical stage, it is always important to get easy and quick access to all up-to-date, reliable resources, including scientific literature and journals,” says Dr. Jaeho Lee. “In this regard, ScienceDirect is a perfect solution. Its wide coverage throughout all related fields and its searching method meets my needs. “
Dr. Geun-Hyoung Ha, who serves as the project leader on the anticancer team, has found that Google Scholar can’t compare to Scopus when it comes to efficient searching. “The Scopus database helps me by narrowing down more reliable references and offering the option for the specific types than Google Scholar.”
A better way to find and verify information
General manager Jeong Yul Yun says, “PharmaPendium is a great tool to search for adverse effects and toxic information of materials.” And he has found it to be a far faster way to verify information than using a typical search engine like Google.
“It is definitely of great help for me being able to access all of the PharmaPendium drug safety data on marketed drugs, enabling me to look into the detailed adverse events of those drugs that have been our competition,” explains Dr. Jungmi Lee, a project manager. “The information is very well organized in a succinct, but still comprehensive manner in each stage (e.g., pre-clinical, clinical, post-market). This allows us to predict the potential risks that I might encounter along the path to develop our innovative drugs, and to establish strategies by taking it into account as early as possible, which will have a huge impact on our programs.”
Dr. Dong Yeon Shin, senior research scientist on the ADC team, is also especially appreciative of PharmaPendium, which she describes as “truly well-organized and it contains the essence of what we needed.” She likes the way it is organized by the source and the year, and feels it would be a very useful tool for collecting data for IND filing.
Solutions that complement each other
As an ADC project leader in drug discovery, Dr. Juyuel Baek finds Reaxys and ScienceDirect both very useful for getting results efficiently. “The complementary use of Reaxys and ScienceDirect among the Hive programs seems to be the best solution in terms of leading the project for me,” explains Dr. Baek. He has found this combination of tools to be the best way to effectively use time when working in new drug development.
Whether it is Dr. Ha using Embase to learn more about certain keywords, or Mr. Yun putting a chemical structure into Reaxys to see how to synthesize it, the scientists and researchers at LegoChem Biosciences are regularly using Elsevier’s R&D Solutions during their time in The Hive. With these tools in hand, the team at LCB is continuing to make impressive advances in their work.
Authors:
Juyuel Baek : Chemistry, Project leader at ADC platform team 2
Jy Baek is a project leader at the LegochemBio since 2016. He was a researcher at Vaxxilion GmbH, where he contributed synthetic carbohydrate vaccines and design for treating diseases based on organic chemistry. Dr. Baek holds a M.S and Ph.D. in chemistry from Yonsei University and did his postdoctoral training under Professor Peter H. Seeberger at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces.
Daeyoung Jeong : Investor Relations Team leader at the Business Development Center
Mr. Jeong joined LCB on July 2018. He has been in charge of IR & PR. He majored in business administration at Chung Nam University. He has six years of experience in the financial industry and has been an IR specialist for 5 years in Bio & Pharma companies.
Link here to learn more about ScienceDirect, Scopus, PharmaPendium, Reaxys, and Embase.
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