Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine

The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is accelerating biomedical research by closing the link between systems biology and medical research. Collaboration between biologists, medical doctors, computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians is offering new insights in complex systems like cells, organs, and organisms. These insights are essential for understanding principal mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and for developing new tools in diagnostics and therapy.
Neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease, metabolomics and disease network analysis are in the focus of LCSB’s research. Within Luxembourg, the LCSB is building up strong partnerships with all major biological and medical research units. Key strategic partnership has been set-up with the ISB in Seattle. This cooperation is enabling a rapid scientific evolution. The LCSB fosters collaboration with industrial partners and will be a focal point for developing a knowledge-based economy in Luxembourg.
The LCSB has put in place a support group to enable the researchers to focus on their research. All the logistics of about 250 researchers is organized by the Support biotech team using the LabCollector LIMS software. A reagent to buy, equipment to book, a sample to find… everything runs smoothly in a few clicks.

Solution

The center has been equipped with a full version of LabCollector and the Electronic Lab Notebook since 2011. The center needed a complete solution for inventory, equipment tracking and most importantly an electronic lab notebook system to record all experiment data.

Results

Equipment and monitoring

“LabCollector has helped us to list all the equipment in laboratories, from the pipette to the microscope, and to manage their maintenance and reservation. With the Equipment module, we have listed a thousand of equipment, including 150 machines for cold storage. Directly via this module, researchers can find the equipment needed for their experimentation and reserve it. Link to the Scheduler add-on, all reservations can be centralized and are accessible by all the members.
Since recently, we finished the monitoring of cold storage equipment and begin to monitor our incubators. We are now about 200 devices equipped with sensors for temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. The persons responsible for the maintenance of these facilities are directly alerted by email and GSM if temperature is outside thresholds.”

Purchase order management

“Our logistic group is responsible of purchase order management, shipment organization, common disposables ordering, delivery and dispatching, and budget follow up, among many other tasks. That’s why use LabCollector for all these time-consuming but indispensable processes helps us to better manage the large number of orders: more than 6,000 orders for 2015 with 84 different budgets.
Moreover, in 2016, our university changes all the system of budget management. We are now dealing with about 150 budget codes and LabCollector team has been responsible to their implementation.”

News from the team (2016)

“Even if we purchased the Electronic Lab Notebook in 2011, it’s only now that researchers attempt to deal with it. First, the passage of the paper version to the electronic version is not easy for all, and the first version of the LabCollector ELN did not get the vote of all members. Since 2016, a new version is, in our opinion, more accessible and easier to use. We will try again!
Our Zebrafish breeding responsible is currently evaluating the Aquarium add-on to manage all the aspect in this type of breeding: management of racks, fish identity card, fish in/out, and documentation… Some adjustments will probably be necessary, but the add-on already meets many of our criteria!”
– Lab Director