About
medicine.uams.edu/pharmtox/faculty/primary-faculty/eric-c-peterson-ph-d/peterson-laboratory/
People
Prof. Eric Peterson PI
Laura Ewing Lab Manager & Research Assistant
Overall Goal
Digitizing research data to enhance consistency and bolster data management and collaboration.
Approach
Investing in a comprehensive and fully integrated ELN from Labguru.
Results
- Increased efficiency resulting from the ease with which team members can find information.
- The Principal Investigator can easily oversee activities and engage with his team seamlessly.
Prof. Eric Peterson
PI
Laura Ewing
Lab Manager & Research Assistant
Prof. Eric Peterson's lab at the University of Arkansas for is dedicated to the development of new antibody-based medications to treat chronic and acute methamphetamine (METH) abuse. This goal is accomplished through two research projects.
The first project combines antibody therapy and nanotechnology to generate an adaptable range of anti-METH medications (dendribodies) that are applicable to important therapeutic treatments (e.g., a short-acting medication for overdoses and a long-acting, low volume of distribution medication needed for the chronic treatment of addiction). These studies will provide the first detailed information on the necessary design features and molecular principles required to create an advanced new generation of novel pharmacokinetic antagonists for the treatment of drug abuse.
The second project utilizes adeno-associated virus (AAV) particles to deliver genes encoding high-affinity anti-METH antibody fragments discovered by the lab's researchers. AAV-mediated gene transfer could be used to persistently deliver these purposely designed single chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies, which have precise specificity and high affinity for METH. By the end of these studies, researchers will know if gene therapy can safely deliver sustained doses of antibody medications sufficient to significantly reduce METH pharmacological effects.
We interviewed Prof. Eric Peterson and Laura Ewing, lab manager and research assistant at Prof. Peterson’s lab.
Challenges
The Peterson lab's complex research projects come with a great deal of experimental knowledge that needs to be managed carefully in dynamic environment where researchers are constantly joining and leaving the team. Eric began his search for an electronic lab notebook solution to ensure research continuity in his lab. “In an academic laboratory, personnel can change often, with rotating students, trainees and staff only working for a few months or years, contributing their part to the larger project," he explains. "This, unfortunately, can lead to fragmented records, spread across multiple notebooks, computer folders, and instrumentation computers.” Eric tried to solve this problem with a cloud storage platform, but while this solved some issues, it did not offer the kind of navigation capability required by researchers in scientific fields.
Choosing Labguru
Labguru, a specialized lab management platform, was the ideal knowledge and inventory management solution, especially because it is both secure and easily accessible to team members. Stocks, freezer inventory, equipment records and manuals, laboratory protocols, animal records, and more were consolidated into one database. This smart and secure cloud-based consolidation allows Eric's team to find the information at key decision-making times. Eric was also enthusiastic about the ability to easily archive critical information at any point in a workflow. This results in significant time savings and increased efficiency. “Labguru represents the big step we took to move from the paper notebooks we have always used to an electronic format, and it has exceeded our expectations," says Eric.
Management & collaboration
As Principal Investigator, Eric leverages Labguru to see his team's recent activities. “I can sign experiments, comment and discuss the results, and troubleshoot - all within the experimental record itself," he explains. "My comments are saved and can be reviewed in the future by laboratory personnel and myself. Prior to implementing Labguru, most of this communication would be verbal or via email, and therefore disconnected from the context of the experiment. To have transformed this is, I think, one of the most powerful aspects of Labguru.”
Labguru represents the big step we took to move from the paper notebooks we have always used to an electronic format, and it has exceeded our expectations.
Consistency & efficiency
Laura is responsible for ordering, inventory, and organization. She also performs experiments and is an expert in animal experiments. Prior to implementing Labguru, Laura’s challenge as lab manager was to interpret various paper lab notebooks and find specifics on how experiments were conducted. No two people used the same format, and some members barely wrote anything down. “We had data on paper and on computers with no good way to fuse the two together," she explains. "Labguru has helped streamline the development of protocols and the standardized recording of data. It is now much easier to share information, and we don’t have to worry about trying to interpret another person’s handwriting!”
Protocols
Labguru also makes it so much easier to write up protocols that can be shared and reused. Laura especially likes the recipe option and how it can recalculate the amount of an ingredient based on different final volumes. “It makes inventory control and ordering much easier, especially when there are multiple people in the lab," she gushes. "Being able to link materials and recipes to protocols makes it much easier to prepare required items for an experiment. We had typed up protocols for some experiments, but team members didn’t always record changes made to a protocol. We also had shared folders on the computer, which does help with accessing previous results, but those files didn’t always mention how the results were generated. So I would be trying to find a particular protocol for a set of experiments that a former team member had conducted, and not only was the data difficult to interpret, I could rarely find a good example of how to set up the experiment.” This is why Laura recommends Labguru. “Any lab that has difficulty with keeping track protocols, especially when multiple people are running similar experiments, could benefit from Labguru. Once a protocol has been established, you can use the same format for every experiment, and it also allows for editing for specific changes that need to be made. Handwriting no longer hinders the interpretation of data, and it is much easier to share information with others - even if they're out of office!” She explains.
ROI from Labguru
"Being able to integrate all of our experiments and information in one place, instead of juggling multiple paper notebooks with handwritten (and poorly written) information and taped-on images, is tremendously helpful," concludes Laura. "The ease with which information is collected and shared between team members on Labguru is so much better than how we used to collect and share data.”