New translational science company DEXSTR announces seed funding and presents innovative data management tool Inquiro at Pharmaceutical IT Congress

One year after it was created, DEXSTR, a start-up in the field of data management for Life sciences, is among the lead sponsors of the 13th Annual Pharmaceutical IT Congress in London, where it will be presenting Inquiro, the company’s unique solution to manage scientific data. DEXSTR has also announced the backing of IT-Translation, an investor in digital technology start-ups, which is investing €300,000 in this promising young company based in France.

The management of overwhelming quantities of data is one of the key challenges facing life sciences companies today, when an estimated 80% of data generated by research teams remains unstructured. DEXSTR was created by three bioinformatics experts coming from the pharmaceutical industry. They were intent on designing a solution to handle the very large data sets produced by new techniques in biomedical research, such as genomics and next generation sequencing. “Anyone who has worked in biomedical research has made this frustrating observation: We spend too much time managing, searching and analyzing data.We wanted to build a new application to overcome these challenges, and we wanted to equip researchers with the tools they need” said Erwan David, CTO of DEXSTR

Inquiro is the Scientific Knowledge Management System (SKMS) developed by DEXSTR. It gathers all unstructured data – from R&D and discovery to pre-clinical data – and allows researchers to store, organize and interconnect such data, facilitating large-scale collaborations among geographically distant research teams. Based on innovative open-sourced technologies, it supports a translational view of research – utilizing data-driven insight and exploiting metadata from the bench to contribute to meaningful health outcomes. “The success of the translational approach requires business expertise and technical excellence. With our solution and our experience, we can make the most of the knowledge buried in our customers’ R&D data,” said David Peyruc, the company’s CEO.

Analysts highlight that the IT spending of the global life sciences industry will reach $40.8 billion by 2017.^[1] It is also estimated that organizations spend $334 million on information management solutions for R&D teams while $100 million is dedicated to Scientific Knowledge Management Systems.^[2]

Inquiro is the only system of its kind on the market today, with excellent potential to meet a real need as pharmaceutical companies increasingly invest in IT systems to keep pace with technological innovations and advances in translational informatics.

As of September 21, IT-Translation has invested €300,000 in the capital of DEXSTR within the scope of an ongoing and successful collaboration. IT-Translation has also advised DEXSTR from the company’s inception. “After four years of existence and the incorporation of 25 start-ups, we know when a company is promising. DEXSTR has definitely all the characteristics of a successful company,” said Laurent Kott, Chairman of the board and co-foundation partner at IT-Translation.

ABOUT DEXSTR

DEXSTR seeks to help customers transform their data into knowledge so that today’s ideas will become tomorrow’s innovations. Founded in 2014 by three bioinformatics experts from major biopharma groups, the company supports a translational approach to research in life science by providing solutions to manage and analyze vast quantities of data. DEXSTR is a Silver Member of the tranSMART foundation.

ABOUT IT-TRANSLATION

IT-Translation is an investor and co-founder of digital technology start-ups spun off from both public and private research. It has co-founded 25 start-ups, deploying human and financial resources to ‘translate’ technology into products and services, helping researchers/entrepreneurs succeed in the world of business.

ABOUT THE 13th ANNUAL PHARMACEUTICAL IT CONGRESS

More than 150 representatives of global pharmaceutical organizations, leading biotech companies and internationally renowned academic institutions are attending the congress in London on September 23 and 24 to discover the latest developments in big data, translational informatics, data management and IT solutions.

more about DEXSTR