Robot picks up pace of microbial research

Citation

(2001), "Robot picks up pace of microbial research", Industrial Robot, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2001.04928cab.004

Robot picks up pace of microbial research

Robot picks up pace of microbial research

Keywords: Robots, Pharmaceutical

Medicine has a long history of tapping the microbial world for promising drugs, antibiotic penicillin being just the most famous. Japanese drug-makers have already searched through tens of thousands of microorganisms seeking substances with promising medical applications, but until now most efforts have involved manual handling of samples, which is both time-consuming and costly, and thus, the Japanese explain, there has been an ongoing need for knowhow to quicken the process.

Now, a major firm, Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd of Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, reports a sampling-handling robot that can cut the job by half the time and says that:

Since it can take up to ten years to bring a new drug to market a system that can cut development time and reduce development R&D expense is of moment to the pharmaceutical industry.

The firm's Micribiology, working with two other Tokyo firms, automate the task of transferring samples from storage to the culturing area via syringe-like needles which can, with its big stock of sterilised needles, automatically change to a new needle to continue search efforts, allowing the task to be completed in a much shorter time.

Yamanouchi, having verified the prototype's usefulness, will unveil a "practical version to our research lab facilities in fiscal 2001-02. It will employ our robot to help us find promising drugs candidates in our collection of 50-60,000 microorganisms". Management stresses "we will continue to collect microbial samples not only from soil around the world but also from the depths of oceans".