Core facilities harnessing data "perennity" in life sciences

During the last five decades there has been a paradigm shift in life sciences research toward automation, driven mainly by the need for high-throughput screening in therapeutics discovery, and omics. This trend has resonated for basic research, with the profound impact of machine- and deep-learning (ML/DL) based analyses. While ML/DL provides an unprecedented opportunity for modern life science it also risks confounding biases, amplifying artefacts.

To minimize such risks demands assuring the highest possible quality of data production, methodological rigor, and reproducibility. One important way this can be systematically achieved is by structuring technology research infrastructure and operations.

Based on twenty-five years’ experience, Professor Spencer Shorte, Director to the Center for Technology Research & Resources, Institut Pasteur, presents his vision and perspective on this problem, pointing out how core facilities are redefining the way research organizations operate. Inside core facilities data quality-management guarantees empirical data satisfy not only a means to an experimental endpoint, but also the data’s "perennity" to the future benefit of the global life sciences community.