MorphoSys Accelerates Antibody R&D with Genedata Biologics

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Life Sciences
Pharmaceuticals

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Predictive Quality Analytics

Services

Data Science Services

The Challenge

MorphoSys, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company, was facing challenges due to its rapid growth. The increase in molecule and sample throughput led to a significant amount of R&D data, which was difficult to capture, process, and interpret. The scale and throughput of their operations necessitated the use of an enterprise workflow platform to manage and streamline the growing number of their discovery programs. The goal of the new system was to make MorphoSys’ sophisticated R&D processes more efficient and to facilitate handovers between various R&D teams and functions, including screening, molecular biology, engineering, expression, purification, and analytics. The new system also needed to be able to handle the increasing amount of data and samples produced by external partners, such as CROs, which had to be integrated into MorphoSys’ R&D process.

About The Customer

MorphoSys is a late-stage biopharmaceutical company devoted to the development of innovative and differentiated therapies for patients suffering from serious diseases. Based on its proprietary technology platforms and leadership in the field of therapeutic antibodies, MorphoSys, together with its partners, has participated in the development of more than 100 therapeutic product candidates currently in R&D. The company has one of the broadest pipelines in the biotechnology industry, including unique approaches for patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, infectious diseases, cardiovascular dysfunction, and inflammation. The MorphoSys pipeline is based on a combination of strong business partnerships and proprietary development activities. MorphoSys has partnered with major biopharmaceutical companies including Astellas, Bayer, Merck & Co., Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Janssen, Pfizer, Daiichi Sankyo, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, and Shionogi. Using MorphoSys’ proprietary synthetic antibody libraries and their phage display screening technologies HuCAL, Ylanthia, and Slonomics, MorphoSys enables faster, more flexible and, ultimately, better-quality access to drug candidates.

The Solution

After a formal selection process, MorphoSys decided to implement Genedata Biologics as their new enterprise workflow platform, which they internally refer to as “Ybase”. A key reason for this decision was the fact that Genedata Biologics is the only turnkey system available in the antibody R&D space. This allowed for rapid deployment and gave MorphoSys full process coverage right from the start. Genedata Biologics was deployed as MorphoSys’ end-to-end workflow platform across all discovery and development units. As part of the deployment project, the platform was integrated with all relevant laboratory equipment and IT systems, ensuring smooth and efficient data exchange between different systems and groups. Today, Genedata Biologics is MorphoSys’ enterprise workflow system for 150 users, including scientists, program managers, engineers, technicians, IT, and management. In addition, the system has become the central “mission-control center” for all their partnered and proprietary development programs.

Operational Impact

Using Genedata Biologics as their central workflow platform, the MorphoSys R&D teams can now access all project information in real time. The ability to immediately see the status of any project at any time allows for more informed and rapid decision-making at all levels – from corporate leaders to scientists, engineers, and technical staff.
This access to R&D information has transformed how MorphoSys operates today. In dedicated project dashboards, all teams can look up project information such as molecule characteristics (e.g., sequences, assay data, analytics data), as well as operational key performance indicators (KPIs) that help them more effectively make decisions.
Using a shared workflow platform also encourages all collaborators to review, comment on, and use the same data and planning information. This improves accuracy and quality of critical project data, and effectively cuts down on redundancies and inconsistencies.

Quantitative Benefit