About
People
Dr. Yonatan Eran Chief Research Development Officer
Overall Goal
Increasing collaboration between labs to accelerate research.
Approach
Investing in a collaboration-enhancing lab management solution from Labguru.
Results
- Rapid growth
- Zero data loss
- Streamlined communication and collaboration
Dr. Yonatan Eran
Chief Research Development Officer
BioBetter is a biotech company that specializes in expressing large amounts of proteins in tobacco plants and harnessing cutting-edge technology to purify these proteins at a fraction of the cost of purification by other methods. The company is currently focused on producing serum proteins required by the cultivated meat industry, and is on track to significantly reduce the cost of growing meat in labs, accelerating sustainability. BioBetter also aims to cultivate transgenic tobacco plants in open fields, which will translate into limitless scalability and support for the agricultural industry.
We interviewed Dr. Yonatan Eran, Chief Research Development Officer at BioBetter, and asked him about his team’s experience with Labguru as a research data management solution.
Challenges
Dr. Eran manages three separate labs – the agricultural lab, the protein purification lab, and the method development lab. Given BioBetter’s unique structure, inter-lab communication has always been challenging, especially since many R&D team members were often forced to visit labs in different buildings to discuss projects or search for info. Moreover, since many experiments are divided into steps that are conducted in different labs, synchronizing the different labs’ activities proved to be a major challenge.
Secondly, the BioBetter labs once relied on paper lab notebooks, but Dr. Eran’s team found it difficult to collaborate effectively with each lab using a separate set of paper notebooks. Searching for data from previous experiments was also difficult and time-consuming, especially when researchers dug through former team members’ notebooks.
Lastly, the BioBetter team has hundreds of constructs, and Dr. Eran and his team struggled to define their differences concisely and consistently for facilitated documentation. Given the BioBetter labs’ need for close collaboration, this challenge led to a great deal of confusion and slowed progress.
Choosing Labguru
To solve these problems, Dr. Eran researched four data management solutions, some of which he had used at previous positions. He ultimately chose Labguru because its pricing was startup-friendly and because he was interested in a flexible system and an engaged support team that would be eager to work with him to solve problems. Dr. Eran happily reports that Labguru’s application scientists made it clear from the start that they wanted to grow with BioBetter and really understand his team’s challenges.
Key Results
Dr. Eran notes that the ability to document and share everything accurately with zero data loss has saved his company a fortune. Crucially, the streamlining of experiments conducted across multiple labs has enabled BioBetter’s rapid growth, as experiment steps carried out in different labs can now be easily linked on Labguru. This remarkable feature frees scientists to focus on innovation instead of getting bogged down in logistics.
All of BioBetter’s stocks are now documented on Labguru, facilitating cooperation and saving researchers the time they would have wasted searching for stocks and relevant information. Labguru has also boosted Dr. Eran’s team’s consistency by empowering scientists to write protocols and record data in a uniform manner. Scientists can now share information easily, search old data, and filter results to generate insights.
Finally, Dr. Eran reports that thanks to Labguru, all BioBetter researchers can easily access construct information and link experiments to relevant constructs. This way, everything from the construct’s location in a freezer to its antibiotics is just a click away.
The ability to document and share everything accurately with zero data loss has saved us a fortune.
ROI from Labguru
According to Dr. Eran, Labguru saves his team 50% of the time it previously spent documenting and transcribing data. And crucially, Labguru saves BioBetter 60% of the time previously spent coordinating activities between labs by providing a platform for seamless collaboration.