{"id":709,"date":"2020-11-09T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T05:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentrons.com.cn\/?p=709"},"modified":"2024-04-29T14:15:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T06:15:23","slug":"the-future-of-life-sciences-is-laboratory-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opentrons.com.cn\/en\/news\/the-future-of-life-sciences-is-laboratory-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of life sciences is laboratory automation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"If it flies, floats or incests, by all means rent it. It's cheaper in the long run.\" This is one of the many gems of wisdom in the book How to Get Rich by British entrepreneur Felix Dennis . If Mr. Dennis were alive today, he might add laboratory equipment to the list of items that should be rented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The appeal of renting something only when you use it is part of the appeal of the on-demand economy. Cars spend 95% of their time parked. By using Uber, we are democratizing car transportation. We also increased the utilization of expensive machinery. The same value proposition applies to laboratory equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting a company is much easier when you have access to millions of dollars worth of lab equipment and only pay for what you use. That\u2019s the idea behind the emergence of cloud-based labs, where you can conduct almost any experiment with just a credit card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A pioneer in this field is a company we first reported on in 2015 - Emerald Therapeutics: Cloud Robotics Lab<\/strong>. Since that article, the company has changed its name toE<\/strong> meraldCloud<\/strong> Lab (ECL<\/strong>) and received$92.1 million \/strong>Total Financing. They now offer complete life science labs in the cloud, with new lab equipment coming online every quarter.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Little has been revealed about ECL's progress since its inception, but given that everyone in \"Rona\" is staying at home, we can only assume that their business is booming. An article from Carnegie Mellon University<\/strong> discusses how they plan to increase the use of ECL Cloud Labs products to train undergraduate students. Cloud labs are moving from the exception to the norm, and ECL isn't the only company to benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our 2018 article on Lab Automation \u2013 Robots for Life Scientists<\/strong>, we looked at a company called Transcriptic that started providing lab automation services to synthetic biology giant Ginkgo Bioworks. Now Transcriptic has a new name - Strateos - and they've raised $44.3 million in funding to date. The new name came about last year when Transcriptic merged with 3Scan, a startup that uses computer vision and robotics to analyze tissue samples, slicing tissue at a rate of 3,600 slices per hour while taking images of each slice. Previously a manual process, 3Scan can now process approximately a year's worth of tissue samples in one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The combined company now offers a platform that has attracted the attention of some of the biggest names in the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier this year, Eli Lilly launched a drug discovery laboratory developed on the Strateos platform that includes more than 100 instruments and storage of more than 5 million compounds, all within a closed loop. Across the pond, another startup is also developing a laboratory automation system for drug discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Founded in 2016, UK-based Oxford startup Arctoris has secured$6.2 million<\/strong>in funding to develop what they call \u201cthe world\u2019s first fully automated drug discovery platform.\u201d The platform is tailor-made for the drug discovery process to rapidly generate deeper, richer, and more reliable data for all drug discovery companies, including but not limited toInsilico<\/a> and other artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A great example of how the platform is being used is the work they are doing with Hungarian startup Turbine, which is using artificial intelligence to model cancer cells. When Turbine discovers new drug targets through simulations, Arctoris then validates them using its automated wet labs. All of the AI \u200b\u200bdrug discovery companies we have followed over the years will be potential users of the Arcctoris platform to test new hypotheses, collect data, advance projects from in vitro to in vivo testing, and satisfy regulatory agency requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drug discovery isn't the only niche application for laboratory automation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStrateos Robot Cloud Platform<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Automated drug discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Automated materials discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n