Debra times six for Sanofi-Aventis ADME research

8 November 2007

Sanofi-Aventis has adopted LabLogic's Debra LIMS for non-clinical ADME studies across all six of its R&D locations in Europe and North America - the biggest multi-site application of Debra to date.

The company is running Debra 5.6.3 on a Citrix server in its Global Metabolism & Pharmacokinetic Department in Montpellier, with connections to Chilly-Mazarin, Alfortville, Frankfurt, Budapest and Bridgewater USA.

It has taken three years to implement the programme, beginning in 2004 with the decision to centralise and the choice of Debra as the LIMS best suited to meeting the needs of the different sites. User requirement specifications were drawn up in 2005 for development by LabLogic the following year. The system was validated in the first half of 2007 in time for implementation in June.

The harmonisation resolves inconsistencies in LIMS practices following the Sanofi-Synthélabo / Aventis merger, as a result of which some sites had more experience of Debra than others and two were using different systems entirely.

"We anticipate that standardising on Debra will reduce costs and help us to follow the same studies procedures at all our sites, but the biggest advantage is likely to be the sharing of data," said Valérie Gall of the Montpellier GMPK. "With all our ADME compound information on a single database we will be able to compare studies from different sites quickly and easily."