Luminata

Luminata, developed by ACD/Labs, is an enterprise decision support software for pharmaceutical and chemical product development. It consolidates process and analytical data from across a development team into a single application, enabling scientists at multiple locations using different instruments to store, search, map, process, and reuse chemical, analytical, and process data in one place.

Luminata is designed for analytical chemists, process development scientists, formulation teams, team leads, and management at pharmaceutical and chemical organizations. It is used by 50% of the world's top 15 biopharma companies and is positioned as an alternative to spreadsheet-based data management, addressing data silos, transcription errors, and the time cost of assembling and sharing results across teams.

Core Benefits

• Reduces time spent assembling, processing, and sharing data across teams and locations
• Prevents repeated experiments caused by lost or inaccessible data
• Provides access to all chemical and analytical data across a project in one application
• Includes visualization tools to review results without requiring separate graphing software
• Supports structure and substructure searching through chemically intelligent functionality
• Connects data to original experiments to simplify verification and review
• Reduces the risk of transcription errors and use of outdated data
• Integrates into data science and artificial intelligence initiatives

Route Scouting and Process Development

• Builds comprehensive maps for evolving multi-stage process routes
• Links analytical data to each chemical in the process scheme
• Creates process maps by importing LC/UV/MS datasets or selecting existing compounds from a reference dictionary
• Categorizes entries as Starting Materials, Intermediates, APIs, Impurities, Degradants, Solvents, or Reagents
• Auto-populates output tables by linking attribute maps (process, formulation, stability, etc.) with analytical data

Impurity Control

• Supports Quality by Design (QbD) principles for pharmaceutical drug development
• Uses an impurity map to automatically track fate and purge data
• Auto-calculates impurity carryover from analytical results
• Provides access to data from in-process control experiments during scale-up
• Builds control strategies using filters and searching functionality in impurity master mode
• Includes built-in reporting tools to reduce errors and save time

Stability and Forced Degradation

• Assembles degradation maps covering complete drug substance and drug product forced degradation studies
• Imports and processes forced degradation HPLC and MS datasets
• Automatically creates kinetic plots from analytical data to support formulation decisions
• Searches for impurities by structure across forced degradation experiments
• Automatically processes time-point datasets to create forced degradant maps and kinetic plots
• Supports addition of theoretical degradants (e.g., via import of *.sdf files) alongside observed degradants

Formulation Development

• Integrates analytical and process data to support the transition from drug substance to drug product
• Supports drug-excipient comparability studies, test formulations, and excipient case studies
• Includes accelerated stability simulation tools to predict degradant formation
• Supports addition of elemental impurity metadata
• Incorporates data from formulation studies such as dissolution rates
• Builds comprehensive formulation maps
• Allows micrograph images to be appended to visually track batch composition during crystallization experiments

Supply Chain Analytical Data Management

• Attaches analytical data to each batch for real-time decision-making and batch genealogy tracking
• Creates a comprehensive family tree of every batch, including internally and externally produced batches
• Identifies irregularities by comparing analytical data to a reference batch
• Uses structure search to locate where an impurity or entity appears within the supply chain
• Supports batch-to-batch comparison with analytical data
• Generates custom reports per project and/or supply chain record

Data Import, Export, and Analysis

• Built on the ACD/Labs Spectrus platform for importing, processing, and storing analytical data
• Supports a single standardized and harmonized data format for analytical techniques including LC/MS, GC/MS, NMR, Chromatography, Raman, IR, UV, Visible, and more
• Provides native support for more than 150 data formats from major instrument vendors, open-source formats, and emerging standards such as AnIML, JCAMP, and ADF from Allotrope
• Automatically detects the type of data being imported and offers appropriate processing and analysis tools
• Exports data in machine-readable formats such as JSON for use in data science and AI applications
• Connects and assigns full chemical and biochemical structures, structure fragments, Markush structures, or atoms to spectra and chromatograms

Advantages Over Spreadsheet-Based Data Management

• Enables structure searches and reaction mapping, which spreadsheet tools do not support
• Connects each piece of data to an ELN entry to accelerate regulatory submissions and simplify report compilation
• Provides interactive, complete, and connected analytical data beyond peak tables
• Applies QbD principles through dynamic process and impurity maps
• Supports sharing of results from the laboratory to management through a web-based client

What's New in Luminata v2025

• Ability to attach LC/UV/MS data and chromatograms from records in a Spectrus database to Luminata reaction records
• Export of compound record sets to JSON files
• Calculation of incremental cumulative carryover

Luminata is available with a browser-based web client for access from any location, removing the need to be tied to an instrument lab or office computer. Deployment is configurable to fit individual organizational workflows, instruments, and data environments. The platform supports integration with laboratory reactor data, forced degradation simulations, and in silico predictions, and is compatible with instruments and data formats from a wide range of vendors.