ANALYTICAL & LABORATORY EQUIPMENT
AUTOMATION W
ith costs going down, integrators reducing the burden on teams and new software tools that capture data or
connect instrumentation, fully automated systems are no longer only installed at high-throughput screening labs and Big Pharma screening groups. Instead, new tech-forward biotech companies are implementing these systems as they seek to address a labour shortage of skilled technicians, accelerate their discoveries and enable their scientists to focus on their next idea. As a result, biotech companies are faced with how they should
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ACCESSIBLE
Nikhita Singh presents a case study that explores how one company has overcome the challenge of accessibility in lab automation
adopt automation instead of whether they should or not.
A COMPANY’S AUTOMATION JOURNEY For most companies, the automation journey is broken down into three stages. First, it starts with manual operations. Ten, it moves towards a semi-automated system that typically includes a liquid handler and an analytical instrument such as a plate reader. Finally, it moves to a fully automated system with robots, liquid handlers and an array of instruments.
Due to costs or technical challenges, labs typically go through this process stage-by-stage. However, companies such as Beam Terapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering the use of base editing, evaluated its return on investment (ROI) differently – it understood that the greatest drivers of operating costs – personnel and space – are actually best used with automation. So, Beam sought to go from manual to fully automated immediately so it could realise all of the benefits of automation routinely in its day-to-day operations.
THE BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION Beam’s mission is to leverage its cutting- edge science to provide life-long cures to patients suffering from serious diseases. Te company knew that the most effective and efficient path to advancing this mission was through automation. While automation’s ROI is well known – the ability to miniaturise experiments and increase walk-away time and instrument utilisation – Beam also understood how automation could empower its scientists. First, Beam wanted to establish
a culture of automation amongst its scientists as it would alter the way they design experiments. With automation,
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