Lab Automation - Articles and news items

Driving lab automation forward

Issue 6 2007, Past issues / 23 November 2007 /

A round table discussion covering the driving forces behind the integration of automated technology within the pharmaceutical industry, the procedures that are followed when implementing new automated techniques, current areas of drug discovery most benefiting from lab automation, how lab automation advanced the drug discovery marketplace over the last five years, the groundbreaking techniques occurring in lab automation, the relationship between vendor companies and their customers and the current limitations within lab automation. (more…)

The impact of automation on drug discovery

Issue 4 2007 / 21 July 2007 / William P. Janzen, President and COO, Amphora Discovery

Automated systems and modern pharmaceuticals have both had a hugely positive impact on human life. While these technologies developed in parallel with one another during roughly the same time period in the early 20th century, they didn’t interact until automation found its way into the laboratory in the 1970s.

Since that time highly automated robotic systems such as High Throughput Screening (HTS) operations, compound repositories and parallel synthesis chemistry labs have become ubiquitous in core laboratories and are increasingly being found in academic and institutional environments. However, it is surprisingly difficult to measure the impact of automation as an isolated entity; as they have always incorporated automated systems, the settings that employ robotics on a large scale must either be assessed holistically by looking at the impact of the combined technology, or at a lower level by utilizing productivity measures that are less global. This problem is compounded by the fact that the details of core operations in pharmaceutical companies are closely held as a matter of proprietary. (more…)

A roadmap for development

Issue 6 2006, Past issues / 28 November 2006 / EPR

Lab Automation Roundtable

Panelists:

• Dr Ulrich Schopfer, Global Head of Compound Management, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
• Dr Gordon Alton, Department of Biochemistry, Pfizer Global Research & Development
• Kjell Fransson, Project Leader Automation, Astrazeneca R&D
• Thomas Keller, Head of UK Applied Technology, GlaxoSmithKline R&D

Laboratory automation in pharmaceutical research is an established technology, but what does the future hold for its role in R&D? European Pharmaceutical Review asked four industry experts for their views, and you can read what they had to say in this virtual round table discussion.

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Merck & Co.’s automated compound distribution centre

Issue 3 2006, Past issues / 23 May 2006 / Collette S. DeChard, Manager Compound Management Group, Fredric J. Solomon, Senior Automation Project Engineer, Robert Donnenberg Lead Application Services, Merck & Co., Inc.

In the mid-1990s, HTS labs were equipped with high-end automation for screening tens of thousands of compounds while compound management labs continued to manually pick samples and invest in standalone equipment. The bottleneck for screening shifted from testing samples to distributing compounds. In order to solve this problem, Merck & Co., Inc., developed an automated compound distribution center. The facility uses automation from The Automation Partnership (TAP), and a Merck-developed compound ordering system to provide solid and solution samples to Merck scientists worldwide.

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The AstraZeneca ACMF

Issue 3 2005, Past issues / 22 August 2005 / Dr Dalin Nie, Associate Director, and Deborah S. Hartman, Director, Lead Discovery, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Wilmington

Compound management is an emerging discipline that represents a core component of the drug discovery process, from early phases involving high throughput screening (HTS) to late-stage lead optimisation screening cascades.

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