An open-access laboratory encourages creativity and collaboration.

The Pittsburgh Conference and Exposition, which takes place every March and attracts nearly 30,000 attendees, is the traditional launching pad for the year’s marketing campaign of every analytical instrument company. At Pittcon, one can get a first look at the technological advances that will change the laboratory as well as “take the pulse” of the entire industry. There are usually common themes to note in any given year. Miniaturization, automation, high throughput, pharmaceuticals, genomics and proteomics, and information management are all recent buzzwords.

Integrating is hot. Technology makers are learning about the larger systems in which their products are applied across pharmaceutical R&D. Instrument companies usually make just one or a few products well, and they concentrate their R&D efforts on their product line. Their customers, however, apply these products as modules in a larger system, in which the other modules are often products from other companies. For technology developers today, understanding the system or the context or the application of their instruments has become the key to staying competitive in the market.

Ideas for how to work collaboratively to mutual advantage are constantly tossed around in the instrument industry. A customer needs machine A to talk with machine B, so company A launches a project with company B to produce the new A–B machine. Frequently, the result misses the target a little, because making an A–B machine isn’t quite the same as understanding the problem and developing a solution. The latter requires a deeper partnership, not only between companies A and B but also between the companies and the customer—and ultimately other customers who share the problem.

Succeeding with complex partnerships is tough—business books on how to make them work are routinely best-sellers. So at Pittcon 1999, when Gilson Inc. announced that its new Center for Integrated Discovery Technology would attempt to initiate and manage multiple-party collaborations toward developing technology solutions, both customers and other manufacturers wanted to know how the new center was going to work.

Gilson’s goals for the center are straightforward but ambitious:

• Create a new laboratory that offers an ideal environment for collaborative projects.
• Operate the lab as a separate development facility not linked to any one company’s proprietary R&D operation.
• Encourage open participation, even among competing companies.
• Structure projects around the partnership of multiple vendors with pharmaceutical collaborators.
• Use these partnership projects as leads to develop new products that are solutions to customer problems.

Creative Arrangements
Because of the partnerships formed through the center, others besides Gilson scientists work in the new lab. The unique design of the 6000-square-foot laboratory is part of the reason. A large central laboratory, lined on one side with 60 feet of deep workbenches and on another with 30 feet of white board, offers 2000 square feet of design space for modular instruments to be assembled into larger systems. Three central utility columns provide all the services necessary to build instruments into systems. Custom benches support individual modules and can be moved into new locations to “swing” instruments in or out of experimental system designs. Everything is constructed with an eye toward versatility and flexibility. The idea is to encourage creativity and experimentation with instruments—to bring out the creative scientist in those who work at the center.

The idea of designing a lab specifically to facilitate partnerships grew out of Gilson’s recognition that its main products (liquid handling devices, autosamplers, and HPLC equipment) are almost always interfaced with another company’s products. One of Gilson’s strengths in the pharmaceutical market has always been its openness to forming partnerships, and the company has a reputation for successfully integrating its instruments with those of other companies. The desire to take this experience to the next level drove the creation of the center, where the sole focus is on multivendor development efforts. Gilson knew that pharmaceutical customers needed to be directly involved in projects to ensure that the result of the development effort would fulfill their needs. A laboratory for collaborative work, separate from manufacturers’ home R&D labs, was the best way to keep the focus on collaboration.

Projects come to the center with pharmaceutical and instrument company partnerships attached. The center staff looks for drivers—strong interest from Gilson, other instrument companies, and pharma—that indicate that a project idea has enough impetus to succeed. Success criteria are defined up front with care to make sure that all who have a stake in the project will gain enough to stay motivated throughout the life of the collaboration. Instrument companies need to develop marketable instruments; pharmaceutical companies need to discover or develop drugs faster. The more to be gained, the stronger the drivers from both. In projects carried out at the center, partners from both industries sometimes have strong enough interests in the success of the project that their staffs participate. The center is designed to create the ideal environment for this type of work: Participation by several companies is facilitated by a science-, instrument-, and work-friendly design.

Encouraging Collaboration
A science-friendly environment, which Gilson and the center staff believe should encourage experimentation and creative thought, is developed through the workspace, the flexible instrument setup options, the custom-designed benchwork, and even the décor of the lab. The main laboratory space is a large open area onto which the staff and guest offices face. Brightly lit and airy, with ample floor space and reconfigurable benches for instrument modules, it is a space that encourages movement of both scientists and instruments. Working on instrument systems located around the central utility columns encourages new ways of seeing things, and the accessibility of the connections and back panels of machines makes experimentation particularly easy. The columns contain power drops, network connections, gas lines, chilled water, an exhaust, and a central vacuum. Plexiglass enclosures for individual instruments function in place of fume hoods, with multiple exhaust ducts semiconcealed by an expansive silver ceiling. The huge white board at one end of the room gives everyone a place to sketch out new ideas; in fact, the center has placed very large white boards (actually thick vinyl-covered “white board wallpaper” framed directly onto the walls) in nine different locations around the facility. Staff and guests frequently shift back and forth between these “idea stops” and the lab benches.

One of the intended consequences of the central utility arrangements and the movable benches is that scientists use and view the instruments as modules that are part of larger systems. Although labs with different instruments may be separately located in the real-world drug discovery company, they still function as part of a larger system to make, analyze, archive, screen, and reanalyze the stream of pharmaceutical compounds. The center is designed to encourage scientists from both pharma and instrument manufacturers to develop ideas through understanding the larger application of technology, focusing beyond the individual instrument.

One of the center’s early successes is an “open access” automated purification workstation for combinatorial chemistry applications. Working together, Gilson and ThermoQuest (Manchester, UK) defined a need for a system that uses mass spectrometry and chromatography to purify new synthetic products for drug discovery. By bringing input from three pharmaceutical partners into the mix, the team developed an understanding of how this instrument system could be used for new applications. Another need voiced by these partners was a purification workstation that would aid medicinal chemists working on pharmaceutical lead optimization. Developing the workstation was possible only through understanding the differences between these scientists and their companies’ compound library production groups. Library production groups, using combinatorial chemistry technologies, generate thousands of compounds in large batches. Lead optimization groups may generate a few to several dozen compounds, but they work with larger amounts of material. Through understanding how the technology fits into the larger drug discovery process, the center found that the project had both interested instrument companies and strongly appealed to customers.

Rapid Renovation Gilson is a privately held, 50-year-old corporation with R&D groups in Wisconsin and Paris. The new center is located in Lincoln, RI (near the Massachusetts border in the Providence–Boston technology corridor) to give easy access to U.S. and European partners. Gilson leased space in a biotech facility built in 1997 by CytoTherapeutics, and it began renovating the space in late April 1999. Thanks to the participation of Kewaunee Scientific (Wheaton, IL), Centerbrook Architects (Centerbook, CT), and Specialty Operations Solutions (project managers from Smithfield, RI), renovations were completed on schedule and projects were initiated at the center in August 1999.

Safe and Fun
The openness of the laboratory, with offices facing into the laboratory space, meant that occupational safety had to be designed into the space. The wet chemical preparation area—a smaller lab with a traditional fume hood, chemical storage cabinets, waste storage, and sinks—has a separate pass-through entrance to the main laboratory.

The reception area, main lab, offices, and coffee/lunch/gathering area are connected by a “virtual corridor”, which runs in front of the offices and through the main laboratory and is separated from the main lab by a see-through steel mesh curtain. This preserves the open design but delineates the lab, office, and food areas. The curtain, brainchild of Centerbrook Architects founding partner Bill Grover, is almost theatrical in appearance: pleated, silver, and changing in look depending on whether it is lighted from the office side or by tiny orblike spotlights hung on brilliant steel cables crossing the lab below the sparkling ceiling. The lights can be directed to highlight the instruments as well, giving a display showcase look to the lab when desired.

The architects didn’t stop with lighting in creating a look that suggests cutting-edge technology mixed with fun. Visual fun is created with splashes of color as well. A large supporting post, which couldn’t be moved, was boxed in and painted magenta; multicolored chairs populate the staff’s gathering area; and a hollow glass block wall contains a design in changing colored light. These more whimsical design features make the center a fun place for the staff and partners to work.

The influence of design on work quality and productivity is a hot topic today. There is no doubt that the physical design of a workspace can enable or impede work and that different companies need different designs to accomplish their goals. Gilson’s experience with partnerships provided a starting point for a lab designed exclusively for instrument integration experiments. The vision of creating a collaborative research center, where all participants could be productive and creative, helped define the new laboratory design.

 

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Jeffrey P. Kiplinger is scientific director of the Gilson Center for Integrated Discovery Technology (Lincoln, RI ). Comments and questions for the author may be addressed to the Editorial Office by e-mail at tcaw@acs.org, by fax at 202-776-8166 or by post at 1155 16th Street, NW; Washington, DC 20036.