Compound Management
Automated storage and retrieval capacity will increase to 80,000 samples per day. Thanks to high-density trays that hold 1,280
acoustic dispensing tubes apiece, it will be possible to plate 100,000 samples in just 30 hours
Together, these advances will contribute to sig- nificant business impact. An extensive cost analysis determined that the total cost of ownership for this new system – with its dramatically higher through- put – is actually lower than the cost of the previous system at AstraZeneca. Other analyses have shown that the new approach will improve the overall quality of screening data generated, giving our sci- entists a better foundation for their studies.
Vendor collaborations
Despite the prevalence of laboratory technologies in drug discovery, there remain areas where inno- vation and investment in automation could offer real benefit to productivity and quality5. In chem- istry, for instance, there remains a predominance of manual handling activities – a situation that could be transformed with the kind of liquid handling automation and miniaturisation implemented in the high-throughput screening process. At AstraZeneca scientists are currently developing automated systems for many of the common chem- istry tasks in the workflow of making, purifying and analysing compounds. And in screening, AstraZeneca’s collaboration on acoustic mass spec- trometry, where a mist of sample is ultrasonically ejected from a microplate well directly into a mass spectrometer, has demonstrated a significant reduction in assay development time and expense6.
Drug Discovery World Winter 2017/18
At a speed of three samples/second, the use of acoustic-MS in primary high-throughput screening reduces the percentage of false hits due to its label- free mass spectral data.
These and other areas of opportunity can be addressed successfully with the sort of multi-vendor collaboration described here for compound manage- ment. The kinds of sophisticated, large-scale projects that pharma and biotech companies embark on often need so many resources and specific kinds of exper- tise that assembling a team of outside vendors is the only viable option for delivering a robust solution. Of course, it is also necessary to have realistic expectations about these large collaborations. Co- ordinating a project across several companies, all with individual objectives, inherently comes with a lot of risk. Mitigating this risk relies on the final products aligning with the strategic direction of all business units involved and a shared commitment among the teams. Throughout the collaborative process, all parties must continually evolve the plan and address risks. Also, a clear understanding of the total investment for such large, long-term projects is essential, as well as being able to put those numbers in the context of opportunity cost and the competitive advantages of the products. These aspects can be difficult to quantify, but they are critical factors in determining if a collaborative approach like this is worthwhile.
References 1 Ledford, H. AstraZeneca launches project to sequence 2 million genomes. Nature 532, 427-427 (2016). doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19797. 2 Wigglesworth, MJ. Murray, DC, Blackett, CJ, Kossenjans, M and Nissink, JWM. Increasing the delivery of next generation therapeutics from high throughput screening libraries. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 26, 104-110 (2015). 3Turmel, M et al. An innovative way to create assay ready plates for concentration response testing using acoustic technology. JALA: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation 15, no. 4 (2010): 297-305. 4 Griffith, D et al. Implementation and development of an automated, ultra-high-capacity, acoustic, flexible dispensing platform for assay-ready plate delivery. Journal of Laboratory Automation 17, no. 5 (2012): 348-358.
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