PerkinElmer and IDBS Announce Software Collaboration to Improve High Content Screening (HCS) Outcomes for Drug Discovery Research

IDBS, a leading provider of integrated life sciences data management solutions, today announced a collaboration with PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on the health and safety of people and their environment, at the 6th Annual High Content Analysis Conference in San Francisco. The collaboration will be focused on improving data analysis and interpretation of High Content Screening (HCS), an enabling technology in the search for key cellular markers associated with human health and disease.

The collaboration features the integration of PerkinElmer's Columbus™ image data management system for HCS with IDBS's ActivityBase XE screening data management software. The collaboration will provide researchers with a unified interface to access both Columbus's image data storage capabilities and ActivityBase XE's screening data analysis and interpretation features, to enable compelling exploratory outcomes in HCS and cellular analysis.

"The future of High Content Screening lies in an increased synergy between technologies that integrate vast image content with large compound sets, to generate actionable research data," said Richard M. Eglen, Ph.D., president, Bio-discovery, PerkinElmer. "We feel this collaboration with IDBS is a timely and highly promising advance in giving researchers access to greater insights into the cell-based mechanisms of disease, as well as development of novel therapies based on greater understanding of the origins of diseases."

Neil Kipling, CEO of IDBS, said "ActivityBase XE maintains IDBS's leading position in data management for the global drug discovery industry, offering innovation and scalable functionality to screening groups worldwide. This new relationship with PerkinElmer provides scientists with the high performance data management tools necessary to maximize the promise which this technical innovation presents."

PerkinElmer's Columbus software is a flexible, convenient solution for high volume image storage and management. Designed as a partner product for the Opera™ system, PerkinElmer's premier confocal microplate imaging reader, the software has the added benefit of full compatibility with a wide range of image file formats. The Columbus software can be easily used to archive and manage images from confocal and standard research microscopes, and acts as a convenient central repository for all image data.

IDBS's ActivityBase XE delivers ultra high performance data analysis, flexible data visualization/interpretation and storage in one working environment. The new features in ActivityBase XE enable users to analyze rich, multivariant data, perform curve fitting and complex statistics within each well of a MTS, HTS or uHTS experiment. The software enables innovative, domain-aware interpretation through intuitive visualization, featuring a wide selection of data views not available in generic spreadsheet packages or non-specialist solutions.