esqLABS GmbH
Harness the Power of Informed Decision-Making

Often, a market gap is unnoticed until it appears in one’s line of sight.

A similar void was created in the CRO space when Bayer AG—a pharmaceutical company—relinquished its contract research business with the modeling and simulation software now called OSP Suite. In 2017, the licensing of the software was switched to an open-source software that helps major big pharma companies and academia in the analysis of biological and medical health and medication data to extract and translate knowledge for decision-making. This is precisely when Dr Stephan Schaller—a Systems Scientist passionate about Model-Based Drug Discovery, Development, and Dosing (MI4D) with over 10 years of industry experience—decided to change this narrative. With an aim to advance the integration of computational methods in healthcare to derive effective computational platforms for drug-, device-, and treatment-development and optimisation, Dr Schaller laid the cornerstone of esqLABS GmbH.

Dr Schaller is cognizant of the fact that data-driven companies leveraging integrated and advanced analytics outperform their competitors in every sector outside of the pharmaceutical industry. He believes that to compete in an increasingly crowded commercial environment, pharmaceutical and life science companies must gain a greater understanding of the wide-ranging implications of data analytics. This can be applied effectively to drive drug discovery and research, while ensuring a sustainable future. Managing the data and capitalising on it has the most realistic chance of rising to this challenge and driving informed decision-making across the entire lifecycle of pharmaceutical products. However, it’s easier said than done. In pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations, data is often siloed in disparate sources, unable to flow through departments and groups. Evidently, in a cutting-edge life sciences environment, it is imperative to create effective structures that align with the demands and challenges of research and development. This is where companies like esqLABS are moving the needle with unique services based on opensource software that can deliver highly qualitative and customised solutions.

Reap the Benefits of Data Analysis and Model-Based Decision Support

esqLABS is a digital life-sciences solutions company that leverages PBPK and QSP modeling and simulation approaches in the pharmaceutical, crop, and chemical industries to help pharmaceutical scientists, physicists, engineers, and bioinformaticians achieve the best results with their new chemical or biological entities. Specialising in modeling and simulation and personalised and translational medicine solutions, esqLABS is squarely focused on preclinical/clinical base PBPK model development, PBPK-based paediatric investigations and organ impairment studies, DDI investigations, and translational modeling for first-in-man dose predictions.

To help clients harness the potential of faster and accurate decision-making across the diverse stages of drug discovery and development, esqLABS develops and utilises opensource software to create physiologically-based Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (PB-QSP) platforms as value-generating, holistic modeling and simulation solutions to support customers’ decision-making process along the entire life cycle of pharmaceutical products, from research through development and at the point of care. To enable efficient data integration analysis, esqLABS, in collaboration with other forward-looking organisations, forms the bedrock of the consortium that supports the development of these PB-QSP platforms. Powered by the free-to-use software tool OSP Suite consisting of PK-Simand MoBi, the professionally developed and qualified opensource modelingand simulation software solution enables integration of biological knowledge and prior data for building and simulating models that integrate across diverse biological scales.The physiologically-based framework of OSP Suite allows integration of multi-scale data leading to build-up and transfer of actionable knowledge across all phases of drug research and development within one single platform.

Besides PB-QSP platform development, esqLABS empowers organisations with unique services and consulting for standard applications of PBPK models using the OSP Suite with PK-Sim and MoBi.

We mark our distinctiveness in the market with seamless delivery and integration of the solution and our services with the clients’ R &D infrastructure

esqLABS banks on these platforms to help organisations with computational tools, scripted workflows for full reproducibility of the results, and thorough documentation of the model development processes.“Initially, as we started working with the software, we were focused on using the advanced QSP modeling capabilities of the software, translating treatment effect across species and different types of disease populations. However, already in the first year, we also began leveraging the basecapabilities of this software like physiologically-based PBPK modeling and are now increasingly using the software for human toxicological risk assessment in our business,” asserts Dr Schaller, CEO and Managing Director of esqLABS.

Further, esqLABS is rising to the challenge of inefficient interpretation of research data, and the inability to translate the results across the different stages of drug development. esqLABS’ modeling and simulation platforms allow translation and interpretation of data across the different development stages in R&D, be it in vitro to in vivo extrapolation, across species or between patient populations. Leveraging the unique technology, the company supports clients in translating data to understand experimental results better and predicts the outcomes in the next development stage. The software’s ability to translate results, starting from the inception of a compound all the way up to human clinical trials and patient care, has been significantly advantageous for clients. This is made possible by esqLABS, which works diligently to help clients leverage the great potential of the software within their R&D.

The advantages of esqLABS do not end here. The company derives individual treatment effect through deconvolution of population data and develops new solutions for dosing decision support at the point of care with its physiologically-based QSP platforms. The R&D knowledge is contextualised within esqLABS’ modeling and simulation frameworks to help clients optimise patient care and reach personalised treatment goals.This consistent and quality-controlled build-up and transfer of actionable knowledge allows pharma R&D organisations to design clinical studies by optimising dosing and sampling schemes to achieve proof of concept.Apart from applying model-based approaches to precision or personalised medicine, the uniqueness of esqLABS also stems from the cost-efficiency it brings to the table with the opensource software. Moreover, the modular concept of the software allows efficient, flexible, and transparent multi-scale systems pharmacology modeling and simulation. “The software also enables us to design and deliver services in a flexible manner. We mark our distinctiveness in the market with seamless delivery and integration of the solution and our services with the clients’ R &D infrastructure,” adds Dr Schaller.

The Pursuit of Continued Excellence

Putting theory into practice demonstrates several successful examples of esqLABS’ services in action.In what was a true validation of success, esqLABS helped one of the clients to better understand the number of candidates for a specific drug and the potential outcome focusing on patients based on animal experiments. Powered by the unique opensource modeling and simulation software solution and services, esqLABS built a platform for research, drug development, and treatment personalisation in the indication of diabetes. The PB-QSP approach covered various scales, from hormone-receptor interaction to population variability within different species, to help the client select the best drug candidate based on animal data and results in animal studies. The platform leveraged a physiologically-based framework to maximise learnings from animal experiments and fetch an optimal exposure-response profile in human patient populations.

In yet another impressive feat, a client approached esqLABS with regard to PBPK-based paediatric investigations in the development of a specific drug. esqLABS’ modeling and simulation solution proved instrumental in optimising the dose in paediatric patients and the trial for paediatric patients across different age groups. In parallel, this modeling approach was also used to optimise the sampling times in the different age groups and for adaptive trial design.

Moving forward, with a strong value proposition in place, esqLABS will continue scripting similar success stories for several more clients. esqLABS takes immense pride in being a proficient entity of the consortium, contributing to the advancement and development of the unique PB-QSP platform. In the days to come, the company looks forward to focusing on developing new applications for toxicological or chemical risk assessment. In the same vein, funding through national and EU-wide research grants will allow esqLABS to significantly ramp up its services and OSP-Suite related service capabilities. When it comes to geographic expansion, the company is growing organically and plans to foray into different regions in Europe and the U.S.