Information management at Nastech was dealt with through a loose combination of single-function software with ad hoc integration solutions: standard office software was used to maintain information about order requests for peptide synthesis, RNA synthesis, and DNA sequencing; unique databases were used to maintain research results; external web sites were used to calculate biological properties; raw data files were archived on networked drives. The metadata and annotation about research and production protocols were stored in paper-based notebooks. This fragmented research and production information required a significant amount of time to maintain, locate, and reformat if necessary.

Nastech needed an informatics solution that organized and centralized information generated from production activities. They wanted to dramatically reduce time it took to maintain, locate and reformat information in their fragmented research and production systems. The company's key purchase decision factors were broad applicability across research and development, end-user design control, data integration and centralization.

TERANODE Design Suite was brought in as a design automation platform for both the research and IT teams. The product provides a standard interface to design and automate production activities, including reagent parameter calculations, data file import, and records management. The reagent production solution consists of TERANODE Design Suite and TERANODE Model Server running on a Oracle 9i Server.

TERANODE Design Suite allowed Nastech to model research and production protocols, attach the raw data files generated from the work, automate calculations of biological properties, annotate observations, and archive completed research activities into a central database through the TERANODE Model Server. Once incorporated in the repository, TERANODE Model Server allows management and scientists to retrieve models or specific information across all models using individually defined search criteria to accelerate analysis and reporting. Research and production SOPs and completed work are now shared, reviewed, and reanalyzed in "real-time" or years later.

Training, development and deployment times of the TERANODE solution at Nastech took only a few weeks. Researchers were trained on the TERANODE Design Suite use in the lab in hours. Advanced protocol design by professional users is quick, database support by IT professionals is minimal.