The pharmaceutical companies worldwide are moving towards high throughput genomics for various reasons such as a weak drug pipeline, competition, pressure to increase productivity, pressure to innovate, need to reduce time for drug discovery and newer diseases.

The industry is, therefore, aiming at developing powerful medicines, better and safer drugs, more accurate methods of determining appropriate drug dosages, advanced screening for disease, better vaccines, improvement in the drug discovery and approval process, decrease in the overall cost of healthcare, develop designer drugs and personalised medicine according to Anuradha Acharya, CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions.

She was speaking on 'overcoming challenges in high throughput genomics data using LIMS' in a recent seminar on 'advances in gene expression studies' held at Hyderabad during last week.

Acharya said that some of the problems that pharmaceutical industry faces today are that of managing high throughput data, integration of lab processes and lab management. The answer to this, she says, is in lab automation, using a tailor made Lab Information and Management System (LIMS).

Genomic data has become the canonical example of very large, very complex data sets. There has been a significant interest in ways to provide targeted database support to address issues that arise in genomic processing, she added.

DNA microarray analysis has become the most widely used source for genome scale data in Life Sciences after Genome Sequencing. It promises to deliver key insight into gene functions and interactions within and across metabolic pathways. Unlike sequencing data, much of the microarray data remains inaccessible to broader research community. This field is relatively young and is gradually approaching its maturity.

The microarray scientists are looking for LIMS that intensifies information, minimizes information about a microarray experiment, improves workflows, provides instrument interfacing for data capture, meets regulatory requirements, helps in lab management, assists in integration and knowledge management and provides reporting tools, she informed.