Elizabeth K. Nelson, Ph.D. also contributed to this article.
A decade ago, LabKey Software’s founders recognized that scientists sought something beyond static, shrink-wrapped, closed-source software tools.
They needed living, open tools that could be customized to their specialized needs, then quickly extended to match new experimental methods and data types. Beyond these basic requirements, they needed tools to facilitate the openness, reusability and accountability that form the foundation of modern, grant-funded science.
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The LabKey Server open source platform grew out of this vision. Both the company and the open source platform also drew from Seattle’s combination of software talent, expertise in global health, and idealism. The LabKey team dreamed of using skills honed at commercial software giants to make scientists’ lives easier and speed up progress towards treatments and cures. But to do so, they could not take the usual route of developing a software tool and selling identical copies to many users.
Challenge: an ever-changing tidal wave of complex research information
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) Professor Martin McIntosh planted the seed of the idea that grew into LabKey. In 2003, he faced a deluge of proteomics data, so he asked his friend Mark Igra to develop a software system to manage the flood. Igra had been a program manager for Microsoft Office Excel, and co-author of the EndNote reference tool. He suggested sharing the job with his friends Adam Rauch (designer of the first version of Visual Basic), and Matthew Bellew (a lead developer of the first versions of Microsoft Access and SQL Server).
As the software took shape, FHCRC scientists outside of McIntosh’s lab began to see the tool’s potential for managing, integrating, analyzing, and sharing many kinds of research data, not just proteomics data. In 2005, the LabKey team spun out the company LabKey Software to make the LabKey Server platform useful and accessible to many biomedical research labs, not just one. The team recognized the swift pace of change facing research labs, so they designed LabKey Server to be easy to customize and extend.
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Result: sustained, adaptable, reusable open source software
Over the past 8 years, LabKey Server’s general-purpose design, adaptability and permissive open source license have helped users build on an open source foundation instead of reinventing data management basics. More than $20 million of past investments in the system benefit all users.
Igra explains, “Investments in LabKey Server by the NIH and private foundations have had a multiplier effect in the scientific community. We love to see software improvements benefit a community of researchers, not just one research team.”
Today, over 100 installations of the LabKey Server platform support leading disease research institutes all over the globe, including the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), and a variety of HIV research networks, such as the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) and the Coalition for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD).
LabKey Software continues to draw in software talent steeped in experience at local software giants and scientific research institutes. Collaborators with Seattle-based health research organizations continue to expand, including projects with NWBioTrust, the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research & Prevention (SCHARP) at the FHCRC, and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI).
The company partners with research organizations such as these to develop software solutions for translational research based on LabKey Server. These solutions help research teams make sense of the growing deluge of complex research data and collaborate securely, enabling them to translate molecular discoveries into disease treatment.
Documentation, installers, source code, and tutorials for LabKey Server are freely available at http://labkey.org under the Apache 2.0 license. Organizations are free to use the platform independently. Teams that purchase LabKey Software’s services support the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of the system.