Helios: History and Anatomy of a Successful In-House Enterprise High-Throughput Screening and Profiling Data Analysis System.

We describe the main characteristics of the Novartis Helios data analysis software system (Novartis, Basel, Switzerland) for plate-based screening and profiling assays, which was designed and built about 11 years ago. It has been in productive use for more than 10 years and is one of the important standard software applications running for a large user community at all Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research sites globally. A high degree of automation is reached by embedding the data analysis capabilities into a software ecosystem that deals with the management of samples, plates, and result data files, including automated data loading. The application provides a series of analytical procedures, ranging from very simple to advanced, which can easily be assembled by users in very flexible ways. This also includes the automatic derivation of a large set of quality control (QC) characteristics at every step. Any of the raw, intermediate, and final results and QC-relevant quantities can be easily explored through linked visualizations. Links to global assay metadata management, data warehouses, and an electronic lab notebook system are in place. Automated transfer of relevant data to data warehouses and electronic lab notebook systems are also implemented.

Compound Hub: efficiency gains through innovative sample management processes.

While significant investments are made across the industry and increasingly also in academia to enhance or build a compound file, the efficient sourcing of compounds from in-house medical chemistry is frequently seen as a challenge. This article introduces the Compound Hub strategy developed at the Novartis Compound Archive. Central Compound Hubs in Basel and Cambridge were combined with web-based ordering of compounds and assays, providing assay-ready, solubilized samples to labs anywhere in the global research organization. Relieving scientists from time-intensive sample preparation tasks, error rates could be reduced through electronic processing and tracking of compounds/assays and the capture of medicinal chemistry compounds for the compound library could be increased by 75%.