Welcome to Deggie’s Room
We’ve been focused on targeted protein degradation (TPD) since our founding in December 2015. Our early days were in a shared lab facility in Cambridge before we moved to Watertown in 2018. When we moved into 490 Arsenal Way–where we still reside today–we had to build our lab from the ground up, which meant identifying and evaluating what equipment we needed to advance our research.
When building the lab, we made the decision to include integrated laboratory automation infrastructure. This set up, actually several pieces of equipment working together, was designed to help our team of cell pharmacologists readily manage the wide array of 384-well plate-based biochemical and cellular assays needed to screen and characterize potential drug molecules. The machine included two types of fluorescence plate readers, Liconic for long-term storage of cell-based assay plates, a high-capacity plate storage carousel, heated plate sealer, XPeel plate seal remover and a robotic arm to transfer plates between modules. An added bonus? The machine was automated. This feature gave our scientists flexibility to walk away from the machine during long hours of experiments.
This type of automated machine is not something typically found in smaller biotechnology companies like C4 Therapeutics. From the start, our team was excited to have this piece of equipment. We wanted to celebrate having the machine and make it feel special to C4T–but needed a way to do that.
So, we had a naming contest.
Coming up with creative names is a skill possessed by many people across C4T. We created the TORPEDO® name for our platform, MonoDAC™ to refer to our molecular glues, and BiDAC™ to use when discussing our heterobifunctional degraders. When we crowd-sourced our monthly all-company meeting name, one of our colleagues suggested What’s Up Wednesday to reflect our tradition to meet in the middle of the week.
Our cell pharmacology team got to work with coming up with a name for the automated lab machine. Team members submitted names and went through a few rounds of voting and landed on a submission that played on the word “degradation.” With that final vote, our new automated lab machine was dubbed Deggie, and the lab room in which it resides became known as Deggie’s Room.
Since 2018, Deggie has become an integral part of our ability to quickly advance targeted protein degradation research and develop new therapies for patients. Deggie also captures how we strive to work at C4T by working together, personalizing important aspects of C4T and having fun along the way. Throughout this online version of Deggie’s Room, you’ll find stories meant to give you insight into C4T science, our culture and the people at C4T who help make scientific breakthroughs possible.
