Pharma CRO adopts common radiochromatography data platform

14 February 2008

A leading international drug development CRO has introduced LabLogic's Laura chromatography data collection and analysis system at one of its North American sites, bringing it into line with its UK counterpart.

Earlier versions of Laura have been used in the UK lab for some years and it has now upgraded to the same release (v3), providing a common software platform across drug metabolism sites.

Until now North America used two incompatible systems for different instruments, for which separate methods and batch sequences had to be created - a labour-intensive and inefficient system that Laura has now eliminated because, as well as acquiring and analysing data, it can control all of the site's instruments (Agilent and Shimadzu HPLCs and Perkin Elmer FSA radiomatics).

The introduction of Laura, which was timed to coincide with an extensive upgrade including Windows XP and new IT hardware, has also ensured that the North American lab is CFR Part 11 compliant.

Users report that Laura is living up to expectations, despite a steep learning curve after years with the old system. Especially appreciated are the facilities to import and analyse files from their solid scintillation counter; previously they had to enter them into Excel manually, analyse data from multiple files simultaneously, and create summary tables online.

The CRO's future plans for Laura 3 include electronic signatures for on-line data review and links to LabLogic's drug metabolism LIMS Debra, the latest version of which (v5.6.2) both sites upgraded to last year.