Benchling Expands Its Science Software Capabilities With Its First Acquisition
Summary
“It really helps us extend our offering, especially for biopharma where we’re growing a lot.” Founded in 2012, Benchling has its origins at MIT, where as a student, Wickramasekara was frustrated that labs still relied on paper, email and spreadsheets to track data. Fast forward a decade, and Benchling’s software solution is now used by over 750 commercial customers, including major pharmaceutical companies like Regeneron, Sanofi and Gilead. “If we cant reproduce the preclinical findings to begin with, then we dont have a solid starting point and were effectively taking these drugs into a clinical setting on the basis of false positives,” says Armstrong. So thats what led to the origins of Overwatch.” Today, Overwatch’s software enables tracking of all the experimental data involved in the in vivo research of drugs that’s required before human trials can begin. Benchling’s acquisition of Overwatch, Armstrong and Wickramasekara say, will enable the company to offer customers a comprehensive software suite covering the beginning of drug discovery research up until the point of human trials, a crucial part of the process that has an extremely high failure rate.