Lab Automation
FASTER, SMALLER,
SMARTER How advanced automated liquid handling systems are reshaping drug discovery
Once the domain of high-throughput screening (HTS) applications, automated liquid handling systems are now used ubiquitously in drug discovery and have been fundamental in increasing throughput, driving efficiencies and improving standards of accuracy and reproducibility in pharmaceutical and biotechnology workflows. This roundtable considers some of the latest advances in liquid handling technology and the impact they are having on drug discovery.
D
rug discovery has undergone a revolution over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the widespread adoption of auto-
mated liquid handling. Driven by a competitive need to maximise throughput and increase produc- tivity while ensuring the highest levels of accuracy and reproducibility, automated liquid handling sys- tems have been adopted across the entire pharma- ceutical and biotechnology pipeline. Improvements in the scale, speed and quality of
workflows enabled by automated liquid handling have not only helped to reduce timescales and deliver results faster, they have also made drug dis- covery more efficient and systematic. Use of auto- mated liquid handling in assay development, for example, is essential for the methodical testing of multiple conditions to ensure robust assays are put forward for screening applications. Automated liq- uid handling systems have also been vital to simpli- fy the creation of complex multi-parameter exper- iments in a reproducible, reliable and robust man- ner, while freeing highly-trained scientists from manual lab-work to focus on more skilled tasks, such as the analysis of data and planning of exper- iments.
Drug Discovery World Winter 2018/19 The remarkable scale and speed at which liquid
handling tasks can now be performed have acceler- ated a shift towards biotechnology-derived thera- peutics and new approaches to personalised medicine. Advanced high-throughput techniques, such as next-generation sequencing and genomics- based target discovery, demand operation at a rate and on a scale that can only be achieved using automation. Automation in liquid handling workflows has
long been critical for drug discovery. Today, in the era of genomics, next-generation sequencing and personalised medicine, it is proving more impor- tant than ever as a tool for accelerating the search for safe and effective therapeutics.
More precise and accurate low-volume liquid handling While performance criteria once focused squarely on speed, capacity and throughput, recent advances in liquid handling technologies, automa- tion software and robotics have led to the develop- ment of a new generation of platforms that offer exceptional accuracy and precision even when dis- pensing the smallest volumes.
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By Helen Stewart-Miller and Dr Richard Massey
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