How Robots Are Making Better Drugs, Faster

Drug companies such as Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) say they are investing in more automated drug discovery in order to develop better therapies more efficiently as research and development becomes more labor-intensive amid growing traction for personalized medicine, reports the Wall Street Journal . HighRes Biosolutions CEO Peter Harris notes robots are appealing to pharmaceutical companies because they are "relentless ... they never stop." He also says the software governing the robots "is able to keep track of many more things in parallel than a human." A new Eli Lilly research center in San Diego uses robots to accelerate scientific discovery, and one application features glass-enclosed robotic arms growing cells, isolating DNA, and depositing samples into small plastic "plates" that resemble miniature muffin trays. Lilly's Dan Skovronsky says the robots also shuttle samples between various equipment, noting "we want to have humans focus mainly on what they're best at: thinking and strategy rather than mixing and purifying and shaking samples, which humans do today." Skovronsky says Lilly is testing these proteins as potential treatments for cancer, diabetes, and cognitive disorders. Meanwhile, GSK's Philip Dell'Orco notes automation could hypothetically ensure better reproducibility. Since robots can perform the same task in exactly the same way, every test should be uniform, boosting the value of experimental data for drug candidate screening.