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%.