Advanced robotics in the chemical industry – a technological revolution
In the chemical manufacturing industry, time is of the essence: clients require novel molecules and formulations, often as quickly as they can, for projects that are highly time-sensitive. This isn’t an easy situation for either the client or the company serving them – the development of a safe, stable, and effective molecule can take up to a year, and many clients are not willing to wait that long.
For laboratory workers, tasks such as simulations, assays, chemical storage, database logging, and liquid handling are all extremely time-consuming, and can quickly pile up and push the deadline further. I’ve been there, and I know for sure how many countless hours can be consumed during pipetting, storage management and labeling samples – a lot!
Thankfully, the same technology that is bringing about a fourth Industrial Revolution is now starting to change this situation, sweeping aside the obstacles of these tasks by introducing high throughput screening (HTS) technologies, which can facilitate the analysis of over one hundred thousand samples in a day.
Making use of their own integrated chemical libraries, HTS systems harness the compounded information contained in databases to rapidly analyze microsamples of nanoliters (and even picoliters) in instants, handling these tiny assay plates faster and more delicately than any human hand could manage, logging all data in milliseconds and screening it for hits on measured parameters.
Iterated tests in identical conditions may be a challenge for a human team of laboratory workers but not for a highly-advanced AI: training it to handle new conditions, as well as learning when to exclude certain samples from the assays, is a simple task that will take operators a few clicks.
When it comes to cost efficiency, HTS comes out as the obvious winner: in an industry where employees are earning six-figure salaries, time is money… and better spent on designing molecules and interacting with clients. Furthermore, the flexibility and reproducibility of using microscopic amounts of sample helps reduce expenses significantly and lowers operational risks.
Just ask Derrick Miyao, former Manager of Automation at Neurocrine Biosciences – his case study stated that the company only required slightly more than one month to obtain a return on their investment after integrating Verso into their process.
I mentioned cost and time above – with robotics, both finite resources are ideally maximized through automated methodologies to further amplify the output of such processes. In a world of Industry 4.0, automation is not just an advantage – it is simply the way forward.
#High #Throughput #Screening #Technology #Transforming #Chemical #Manufacturing #EFMaterials #Blog
