Born out of the need to address inefficiencies resulting from volumes of data to be analyzed in extremely tight timeframes and with limited guidance, Ariadne built a software to analyze testing data generated during drug development. The software company has opened its headquarters in Lawrence, KS and secured a small business loan from the state to grow further.
LAWRENCE, KS, March 8, 2021 ̶ On February 25, 2021, the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce officially welcomed Ariadne Software®, LLC to Lawrence, Kansas. Ariadne, a pharmaceutical software developer, employs advanced computational techniques and artificial intelligence to review and audit scientific data generated during drug discovery and development. The company, which moved from Philadelphia to Lawrence, has been growing and has added a job and an internship in the past four months in the Lawrence area. To add more resources, Ariadne leveraged the resources provided by the city and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce to get a small business loan awarded from the Kansas Community Investment Fund through NetWork Kansas and Great Plains Development, Inc. on March 5, 2021.
The Chamber Board of Director, Paul Davis, and the Mayor, Brad Finkeldei, welcomed Ariadne to the city and to the Chamber with a virtual ribbon cutting ceremony in their office in downtown Lawrence. Highlighting that the city and the Chamber have resources for all businesses, big and small, they added that they “love to see such technology businesses growing in Lawrence.” Excited to return to Lawrence, Stephanie Pasas-Farmer, PhD, President and Founder of Ariadne Software, took this opportunity to “thank the city and the Chamber for all the resources that (they) have made available to help establish and grow (her) businesses.” Her other company, BioData Solutions, is a scientific advisory firm that offers research and development, regulatory and commercial consulting services to early-stage pharmaceutical and biological drug development organizations in the field of bioanalysis.
Access a recording of the virtual ribbon cutting ceremony:
The City and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce welcomed Ariadne with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Left to right: Joe Ahmadian, Director of Business Development at Ariadne Software; Paul Davis, Chamber Board of Director; Brad Finkeldei, the Mayor; Stephanie Pasas-Farmer, PhD, President and Founder of Ariadne Software; Audra Fussell, Practice Representative at The Chiropractic Element; and Shailesh Pandey, Director of Software Development at Ariadne Software. Picture Courtesy: Lawrence Chamber of Commerce
Stephanie started her journey in Lawrence with a summer research internship at the University of Kansas during her undergraduate program. She soon fell in love with the university and the city and returned a year later to work on her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry. However, after receiving her Ph.D., she had to move away from Lawrence and to the east coast due to the lack of relevant job opportunities. While living on the east coast, Stephanie had the opportunity to work in the field of bioanalysis with some pharmaceutical giants and global contract research organizations. Using this extensive experience, she started BioData Solutions, her scientific advisory firm. “Analyzing volumes of bioanalytical testing data manually from different sources in a time crunch is an inefficient process. It results in errors that can lead to rerunning of experiments and even bad drugs being introduced to the market. It made me wonder if there was a software that could help with review and audit of the testing data, and address the inefficiencies in the process. When I found none, I decided to build one on my own with the vision of making drug development faster, safer, and more efficient. This is how Ariadne was born” shared Stephanie. In 2019, her family was able to finally move back to Lawrence, KS, to be closer to some family and in the town she had come to love. She has moved both her businesses here since, opened Ariadne’s headquarters in downtown Lawrence and leveraged several resources through the Chamber of Commerce.
Ryan Rains, Business Development and Programs Manager at the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, has been instrumental in supporting Ariadne’s needs and helping the organization secure a small business loan from the Kansas Community Investment Fund through Network Kansas. He introduced Stephanie to Bob Wetmore, the Co-Director at Great Plains Development, Inc., who guided her through the application process. The loan funding will be used to secure more personnel and resources to build additional functionality in Red Thread®, Ariadne’s flagship product. Red Thread® is a first-of-its-kind auditing tool for testing data that is generated during drug development, including preclinical studies.
The cloud-based software uses advanced computational techniques and artificial components, such as expert systems, computer vision and natural language processing to parse through testing data, and then tags data as passing, failing or requiring additional review. It is not designed to replace humans, but to help them analyze the data in context that only humans can understand; it is therefore an augmented human intelligence system.
About Ariadne Software
Ariadne Software® applies artificial intelligence solutions to bioanalytical data to accelerate data review and offer unprecedented levels of sensitivity and granularity for precision bioanalysis. The company was founded on the belief that the right tools paired with bioanalytical expertise can help biopharmaceutical scientists better identify and predict risk early in drug development, while accelerating drug development timelines and delivering treatments to the patients who need them most.
Contact:
Stephanie Pasas-Farmer
Founder and President
spfarmer@ariadnesolutions.com