ELNs haven’t influenced research behaviour as much as you'd think, and I wanted to understand why.
Back in September, my consulting company was hired to find alpha testers for Lab Thread; a collaborative platform developed by Ryan Cawood and Deyan Sultov in response to an unmet need Ryan identified as CEO at OXGENE, namely the lack of easy to use and scalable solutions for the digital management of lab workflows.
Lab Thread’s goal was simple: build a platform so intuitive and effective that scientists choose it over pen and paper; and prefer it over existing products. It must provide the functionality scientists need at each stage of their career and make the solution work alongside their other essential tools.
My mission was to conduct market research and collect unbiased, customer-centric viewpoints on what bench scientists really need when recording data, designing experiments, and cataloguing samples. I wanted to understand how the needs shift between academic research, therapeutic or technology development and CRO services.
As a PhD student in Leeds, when I routinely went to bed after 10pm, my car (Vivvian - AKA the disAstra) cost less than my Nokia and gene synthesis was a luxury, I remember searching through handwritten lab books to find the whereabouts of an early passage HEK cell and the origin story of a gifted plasmid. I’d cross my fingers and hope the tubes were labelled accurately and stored as indicated in the hand written 96 well grid paper. It’s quite possible they had been freeze thawed a million times or left out in the Yorkshire sun by a project student, but we will never know.
Oddly, my award for academic of the year wasn’t very forthcoming, though I did continue pipetting for a few more years, helping to design and produce antibodies. This involved a lot of detailed note taking, figure generation, inventory management, templated reporting and protocol use. Even with a high level of care and attention to detail, I was still called upon by my successors for some time after moving on to help with locations and protocols.
Fast forward to 2025, spending time with researchers in Oxford, London, Bristol, Bath and Exeter, I was fascinated to see how tools have evolved since I finished my PhD 15 years ago. I couldn’t find a biotech or start-up that wasn’t using an ELN; so that’s progress, but my interviews uncovered frustrations that resonated with all of us here. Conversely, and to my surprise, the "status quo" in academia still involved paper lab books, ring binders, and disconnected data folders.
The risk of hard-earned experience being lost between lab bench residencies still exists and that struck me as absurd. I asked myself what I thought was an important question: Why isn’t every scientific researcher using a digital platform to plan and document their research, even with free platforms available? What would it take to help give everyone the confidence and motivation to modernise?
The evolution of protocols, the ability to cross reference past efforts and recall unusual results is what leads to serendipitous discovery. The founding concepts and IP for biotech companies, or pre-clinical data for therapeutic campaigns are largely born out of academic institutions. So shouldn’t every element of this research be tracible, searchable and secure? Shouldn’t this be taught to students and engrained into the daily habits of academic researchers? And shouldn’t the platform be accessible by every stage of a researcher’s career?
Perhaps I should make it my mission to become an authority on the subject. I could share fact checked references related to the most reported legal disputes in biotech. Making claims that using an ELN with digital time stamp functionality at early stage research would save a lot of money and future heartache. But I know my intellectual limits and the surf looks good this weekend.
During this project, alpha testers shared common concerns and it helped me get closer to an answer to my question.
- Data Continuity: The loss of progress and protocols when lab members move on.
- Static Workflows: The inability to continue work or access data outside of the physical office.
- Slow Feedback Loops: The struggle to get fast, clear, specific and documented feedback and advice from supervisors and collaborators.
- Handover Hurdles: The difficulty of recording and passing on tasks during shift work or complex collaborative projects.
- Cloud Scepticism: A lingering hesitation around using web-hosted platforms for sensitive data.
- Cost: The existing solutions don’t seem to be affordable for everyone at every stage of their career, or at every growth stage of an organisation.
I showed our testers the early-stage platform to see how close we were to addressing these concerns. Their feedback was compelling, so I joined Ryan and Deyan to be their Commercial Director. Together, we are focused on bringing these insights to life and building partnerships that will offer real value to our users.
I’m really excited to start sharing some of these, and thankfully our head of Marketing Sophie Lutter is on board and ready to do her thing.
Join our Beta Testers
We are on the countdown to our April launch.
Before then, I’d love for members of my network to join our Beta Testers. If you fancy a look at what we’ve been building and would like to help shape the final version of Lab Thread, it would be great to have you on board.
