About
People
Prof. Dinis Calado PI
Overall Goal
Easily tracking multiple, long-running experiments.
Approach
Investing in a fully integrated lab management solution from Labguru
Results
- Increased interconnectivity and communication between researchers
- Facilitated backtracking through complex, long-term projects
- Streamlined onboarding of new team members
- Enhanced inventory management
Prof. Dinis Calado
PI
Using an integrative approach to immunology and cancer biology, the Immunity and Cancer Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute aims to understand the mechanisms by which healthy GC B cells become cancerous. The lab uses cutting-edge genetic techniques in vivo in the mouse, including conditional gain-of-function and/or loss-of-function specifically in GC B cells using primarily the Cre-LoxP system. The confirmation and/or validation of the findings in these systems are obtained through the study of human samples of GC B cell derived cancers.
We interviewed Professor Dinis Calado, whose research interests stem from his time at Harvard Medical School studying how lymphomas develop from B lymphocyte cells. Calado’s lab at the Crick Institute investigates how B cells develop, and how different stages of cell development might give rise to tumors.
Challenges
Prof. Calado has worked in many labs, and was always burdened with the inflexibility of paper lab notebooks. This was particularly difficult for his kind of research, as he and his team work with mouse models on long-term experiments. “What happens when you are inputting the data from the experiment in paper form, is that you can start to lose track of things because you have to write every page beside each other," he explains. "If the experiment runs over a 12-month period or longer, it can become quite unwieldy. These are long-term studies which we have to carefully monitor. When registering data in paper form, it’s not that you forget what you did, it is that when you are running multiple experiments, you have go back many months to see exactly where an experiment started. In the digital notebook, you can search all running experiments and understand the time frame in which they took place. You can easily backtrack through the chronology of the experiments.”
Choosing Labguru
Labguru met the lab's needs with its ease of set-up and definition of projects. "We looked at three to four different ELNs as part of the solution review and selection process," says Prof. Calado. "Labguru’s unique strength was its ability to facilitate interconnection between different members of the lab and intercommunication around projects between the members of the lab. Moreover, all lab orders, purchases, stocks and positions are registered in the system so you can see who ordered what and which stock is available. This is very valuable shared knowledge.”
"All of the lab’s databases are fully integrated with Labguru experiments," he continues. "A certain antibody used can be tagged in context with specific experimental steps. This allows a new team member to find information without relying on others for support. We have regular lab meetings and open the Labguru system to discuss project updates. While you are travelling you can also easily communicate with the team on project updates."
A digital future
Prof. Calado sees potential for collaboration between labs within the Crick Institute for shared projects and reagents. "There are around 110 labs in the Crick institute," he explains, "so we need to harness all these different fields and a unified system should support these interactions. The path forward is to evolve digitally and we are firmly on that path.”
Labguru’s unique strength is its ability to facilitate interconnection between different members of the lab and intercommunication around projects.