How MOMA Therapeutics Strengthens CRO Collaboration Through Smarter IT

"If there’s a CRO doing assay screening for us and we want to get their raw data files, they just drop them into the proper folder. Their scientists can log into Egnyte and upload the content, and we can immediately see it."

Kate Hardy

Senior Director of Informatics and Technology • MOMA Therapeutics

MOMA Therapeutics is a clinical-stage, next-generation biotech doing big things in precision medicine. But while its R&D, which focuses on utilizing its proprietary KNOMATIC™ platform to discover small-molecule medicines that target highly dynamic proteins is innovative, it’s also extremely data-intensive. That makes the firm’s IT posture paramount, especially as it relates to CRO collaboration and the management of lab data.

When the IT services provider Pliancy connected MOMA with Egnyte, the company maximized efficiency, efficacy, and control in these critical areas.

Challenge: Make External Collaboration More Efficient and Secure

MOMA started its first Phase I clinical trial in 2024, a milestone that is both exciting and a signifier of the four-year-old company’s relative youth. At this early stage, conducting an in-house trial can be costly–a consideration that has made MOMA inclined to partner with CROs for many clinical development activities.

“Clinical is an extremely expensive function for a company of our size,” explains Kate Hardy, Senior Director of Informatics and Technology at MOMA. “We can’t justify the cost of hiring a ton of full-time employees to build out a full clinical organization yet.”

While outsourcing has helped MOMA be more intentional with their budget, it has also complicated the company’s information environment. “We now have this mixed environment of both internal and external people, so for security purposes, we need to have really good control and visibility into who has access to what information,” Hardy says. “The goal was to strike a balance between making content easily accessible to those who need to see it, while also ensuring external collaborators didn’t get access to something only MOMA employees should see.”

Access controls weren't the only issue: Partners could resort to suboptimal file sharing practices without a structured and well-governed content environment. “In my previous experience working with CROs, I've seen data frequently shared through email due to lack of access to a centralized repository,” explains Hardy.

“This creates both security risks and practical challenges, with important files getting stuck in email limbo or lost entirely. That's why at MOMA, we've prioritized providing our partners access to our secure file-sharing system through Egnyte.”

Kate Hardy

Senior Director of Informatics and Technology • MOMA Therapeutics

Then there was the issue of lab data. As Hardy explains: “Scientists collect valuable data on lab instruments, but it gets siloed on computers in the lab. To get it into the database, they might email it to themselves or use thumb drives. This is just a nightmare from a security perspective, and an efficiency perspective.”

Solution: A Unified and Secure Content Environment in the Cloud

Pliancy is a key partner in MOMA’s technology strategy. The IT services provider allows MOMA to outsource much of its technology workload, from business tools to security licenses and beyond. As Hardy puts it: “Pliancy is effectively my IT team.”

It was through Pliancy that MOMA connected with Egnyte to address the issues MOMA was facing with collaboration and lab data management. Hardy was able to create a folder structure in Egnyte with a designated area for external collaborators, giving CRO partners an easy way to share data without resorting to email and thumb drives. She offers an example: “If there’s a CRO doing assay screening for us and we want to get their raw data files, they just drop them into the proper folder. Their scientists can log into Egnyte and upload the content, and we can immediately see it.”

Egnyte’s access permissions functionality allowed MOMA to group users by role and provision access to different folders accordingly. This ensured CROs only had access to the proper folders for external collaborators and were blocked from viewing data intended for MOMA employees.

Robust permissioning on its own may not always be sufficient as human error is a possibility. But Egnyte provided holistic visibility and timely alerts that keeps MOMA on top of any irregularities. “Egnyte makes it so easy to audit the entire content lifecycle,” Hardy says. “We can see exactly who has access to what, who is downloading and deleting content, and whether they’re doing so appropriately. We once had a situation where information had been unintentionally added to a folder for the wrong collaborator, and using the Egnyte audit reporting features, we were able to confirm nothing had been viewed or accessed by the incorrect people. This is especially important now that we are working in a much more regulated space and need to be compliant with our handling of PHI and PII. I appreciate that we can set alerts for sensitive content access and sharing.”

Critically, Egnyte’s lab-to-cloud functionality freed MOMA and its scientists from the poor lab data management practices that had previously dogged them. As Hardy explains: “We can map the drive of our lab computers to a specific location within Egnyte. That means any data generated on lab instruments is automatically fed into Egnyte, which is more secure and convenient for our scientists.”

Benefits: More Efficiency and Less Risk in CRO Outsourcing

MOMA is currently using Egnyte to collect data from 16 lab instruments. Collaborating with CROs has never been easier or more secure. And all of these benefits have come through a platform perfectly suited to Hardy’s, and MOMA’s, needs. “As someone who needs to run IT efficiently, I think Egnyte is just fantastic,” Hardy says. “We don’t need to hire administrators–it just works. It has so many great tools for keeping things secure and compliant, it keeps our lab data safe and organized, it’s flexible in terms of content access, and it’s so easy to use that onboarding is a breeze.”

Sean Akers, IT Consultant at Pliancy, echoes that last point: “Egnyte is probably the easiest file sharing tool I’ve used. Organizing everything and setting up permissions is very smooth, and on the rare occasions when we do get support tickets, it’s always something we can handle quickly.”

Now that MOMA has established a stronger security posture and built a thorough permissions structure, the next step is to expand on policies to address questions such as what kinds of files are tagged as sensitive and where they’re stored. With that in mind, Hardy expects her future use of Egnyte to include Egnyte’s Secure & Govern tool.

MOMA has used other file sharing and collaboration platforms, namely Microsoft SharePoint and Teams. They have now standardized on Egnyte. “We prefer to limit our external use of technology platforms, and if we have to choose one to use both internally and externally, it’s definitely Egnyte,” Hardy explains. “This isn’t just because of how easy it is to use or the features I’ve already described. It’s because Egnyte has extensive experience working with life sciences companies and because they’re so great to work with. Whatever the issue, I always know Egnyte will listen to it and solve it. I certainly can’t say that about all vendors.”