Company uses BA test reviews to help build drug compounds  

Drug-discovery company Infinity Pharmaceuticals develops and integrates capabilities in synthetic chemistry, chemical genetics, informatics, and biological screening.

The technology-intensive firm brought in BA (business analytics) software in the form of Spotfire’s DecisionSite “as a critical piece of our infrastructure,” says CIO Andy Palmer. “But the most compelling application for us was hit-picking.”

A key step in drug discovery is running assays of many compounds to examine their efficacy. Poring over the results by hand can be informative, but with the mathematical and visualization muscle of a BA tool, “The structure of the compound is displayed. They can start to see patterns that show up in effective compounds,” Palmer explains. “With DecisionSite, we find it easy to correlate biological effectiveness with chemical structure.”

Cambridge, Mass.-based Infinity takes advantage of DecisionSite’s “guides,” scripts with instructions, and “posters,” or Web pages with annotated results. Infinity deployed BA software for three classes of user: those sophisticated enough to build guides; those who execute guides inside the full client; and the majority, who get to see the poster/deliverables. Palmer says Infinity chose this particular offering because it was easier to learn, has low-overhead architecture, and integrates with Infinity’s other data tools.