On this interview, we speak concerning the previous, current, and way forward for automation and digitalization within the laboratory with Dr. Klaus Lun and Dr. Chris Mason.

May you introduce yourselves and your present roles?

Dr. Klaus Lun: I’ve been with Tecan for about 10 years, working the Life Sciences enterprise – which is our end-user division. Throughout this time, I’ve witnessed the evolution of automation on this area, and are available to know what our prospects need and wish.

Dr. Chris Mason: I’m a professor of genetics, physiology, and biophysics at Weill Cornell Drugs, and am concerned in large-scale genomics, akin to medical genetics, computational biology and even artificial mobile genomics.

Are you able to give a short historical past of automation and its present influence on the science and expertise industries?

Dr. Klaus Lun: Automation within the lab has been round since individuals began to carry out experiments, and developed from the requirement to do extra of what’s at the moment being completed. The primary actual step in automation within the lab was to amplify present processes so that individuals might go from conducting one experiment at a time to a number of. I feel it’s truthful to say that drug discovery within the pharmaceutical business was a significant driving pressure behind this variation, since there was a interval when thousands and thousands of compounds had been being routinely screened to search out new medication. Throughout that point, lots of the primary lab actions had been being automated. Whereas immediately, automation is extra of a software to allow procedures that in all probability would have been very difficult to do manually.

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How do you suppose automation modifications the expertise of working within the lab?

Dr. Chris Mason: I feel while you attain the purpose of getting tens of hundreds of samples coming in from around the globe, they should be effectively tracked and analyzed, and that’s the place you want some extent of automation. Robots can be utilized for all types of automated duties, akin to cell phenotyping, extraction, library prep, and liquid dealing with. The instruments and instrumentation are getting significantly better and extra scalable, which reinforces the working expertise, as researchers need to deal with excited about the science and developing with new concepts, slightly than repeating the identical course of thousands and thousands of occasions.

May you give an instance of that type of analysis and what automation has made doable that wasn’t beforehand?

Dr. Klaus Lun: There’s a present pattern to develop models that incorporate a number of processes in a single instrument, with Tecan being one in all many corporations working on this method. Single-cell biology is an instance of one thing that automation has made doable, making it simple to control these single cells whereas extracting DNA or RNA. There are lots of different nice examples of issues that will merely not have been doable to do beforehand as a result of the response chambers and the circulation path would have been too huge.

Just lately, one of many largest influences on industrial productiveness and analysis has been the COVID-19 pandemic. How did modifications in working kinds through the pandemic have an effect on automation, and did it improve the speed of adoption?

Dr. Chris Mason: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted nearly every thing, nevertheless it did drive us in direction of implementing extra automation, notably as a result of we would have liked further processing energy for the inflow of COVID-19 affected person samples. We wanted a method of monitoring viral evolution in numerous municipalities and locations around the globe, and this pressured us to hurry up the implementation of recent processes, akin to diversifying the sorts of samples which might go on an instrument, notably for extraction.

Dr. Klaus Lun: After COVID-19 hit, we would have liked to rethink how we had been going to work within the lab because the variety of workers current at anyone time had decreased from, for instance, 20 to 2. Rising automation not solely freed individuals as much as deal with their analysis, slightly than getting slowed down with handbook duties, but in addition enabled distant working through the peak of the pandemic.

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What different challenges did you face through the pandemic?

Dr. Chris Mason: The largest downside was that we couldn’t get entry to provides, akin to reagents or ideas. Whereas that’s resolved now, there have been occasions after we reconfigured the system to give you novel options, akin to 3D printing our personal plastic ideas. After doing that for some time, we realized that, along with adopting automation, we might additionally develop into fully self-reliant. Whereas that is now not a problem, it’s one other issue that got here up through the pandemic, and it was fascinating to see the responses to the stress of the state of affairs.

Dr. Klaus Lun: So as to add to that, we seen that there was a really broad curiosity in automation, with lots of people considering automation that had not thought-about it earlier than, rising its prevalence in lots of industries.

How is digitalization serving to within the lab, and the way do you differentiate between automation and digitalization?

Dr. Chris Mason: Ideally, digitalization and automation are one and the identical. For instance, in automated and tracked techniques, barcoded objects are mechanically moved and tracked primarily based on their contents, and we have now noticed this more and more with 2D matrix tubes. We used our system for management functions, to trace precisely which tube had been moved, at which level, and the amount of fluid it contained. So, it’s each automated and tracked, which means it is rather clear what occurred to every tube at every step. That grew to become very helpful in the beginning of the pandemic as we began to validate and benchmark new sorts of COVID-19 checks.

Dr. Klaus Lun: On the digitalization facet, the obvious change through the pandemic was that individuals had been interacting and dealing in a digital atmosphere and on the lookout for help with their merchandise. This meant that there was a giant push to make sure that we might discover a approach to proceed supporting our prospects within the area, and having the ability to do that remotely with new instruments that we had began to deploy was one of many key objectives. One factor that was mentioned intimately was a so-called ‘digital twin’ to program our prospects’ techniques nearly, maximizing productiveness for our customers – in addition to utilizing it for coaching and script writing.

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How will having these types of instruments have an effect on common day-to-day work within the lab, and the way will that make issues extra environment friendly? 

Dr. Chris Mason: In our lab, it’s nice as a result of it’s simple handy off tasks. For instance, if somebody is midway by a big batch of samples, you possibly can pinpoint precisely the place they’re at within the challenge, which means that the transition between a number of individuals engaged on a giant challenge is nearly seamless.

Dr. Klaus Lun: One other vital software is using digital actuality to enhance coaching. The primary time we talked about this, I instantly went out and purchased a set of goggles to get a way of what all these guys had been speaking about within the lab. Now we have now a full product prepared, the place our customers and repair workers can placed on these goggles and obtain full coaching on an instrument.

What are a few of the fundamental challenges concerned in implementing an automatic, digitalized strategy within the laboratory, and the way would you encourage individuals to beat them?

Dr. Chris Mason: It actually depends on the lab. One problem that we have now seen loads, particularly in cities, is discovering the area to work. I additionally suppose that simply integrating the expertise with current laboratory data administration techniques is a problem. There are additionally some instances the place there’s a lack of infrastructure, which is why we’re transferring towards the automation and digitization of data. I additionally suppose that each the informatics and programming of the robots require ability, and, like every ability, you must follow and have some templates to work from.

Dr. Klaus Lun: We’re constructing lots of shopper applied sciences which are very properly obtained by our prospects. I feel probably the most environment friendly method of interacting lies within the huge library of on-line and digital programs – the place individuals sit in entrance of the instrument, and one in all our distant trainers provides step-by-step directions. With the main focus nonetheless very a lot on digitalization and distant working, I feel we are actually in an unbelievable place the place all people has the instruments at hand. I might even log in to Chris’s liquid dealing with system and assist him clear up an issue.

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We learnt loads from COVID-19, together with that the influence of different pandemics could possibly be enormous. May you speak somewhat bit about what biobanking is, why it is crucial, and the way automation is getting used within the ongoing means of increase biobanks?

Dr. Chris Mason: Now we have a brand new biobank at Weill Cornell, the Aerospace Drugs Biobank, the place all astronauts – earlier than, throughout, and after area flight – have samples taken and banked. We then course of a few of them utilizing single-cell, immunological, epitope typing, or different genetic assays to find out molecular modifications in response to area flight. The remaining are aliquoted, banked, and put into storage, typically in liquid nitrogen at temperatures of round minus 80 levels.

A biobank provides you a method to return in time and use newer strategies to copy previous experiments or share samples with individuals. If another person has an thought or needs to copy a medical end result, a biobank provides you an opportunity to share. Extra knowledge means extra energy, and the extra financial institution samples you could have, the extra you possibly can validate any end result once more, whether or not it’s a medical trial or astronaut biology. There are solely round 600 people who have ever been to area, and this makes each pattern extraordinarily valuable as a result of we all know little or no concerning the response of the physique to area flight, and the way we put together to go to Mars depends upon these samples to a point.

Dr. Klaus Lun: Biobanking is an space that’s completely suited to automation because of the variety of samples concerned in most biobanks. The dimensions of it requires fairly a major IT infrastructure to just be sure you can hint every pattern and monitor what has occurred to it. For COVID-19, we noticed a major uptake in database constructing for affected person samples as a result of we had been within the early levels of understanding this illness and the totally different phenotypes that we see throughout a big inhabitants, and biobanking is step one that labs ought to take.

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What do you anticipate to see from labs sooner or later, and the way vital do you suppose automation goes to be?

Dr. Klaus Lun: I feel that it’s going to substitute handbook processes that we usually do within the lab and can transfer in direction of being an automatic infrastructure. Automating small, tedious duties will unencumber researchers to deal with scientific progress, utilizing the robotic infrastructure to carry out the experiments. From an automation standpoint, the pandemic has established one of many largest shifts in mindset that we have now ever seen, and, with that understanding, the life sciences lab of the long run shall be an unbelievable and thrilling place to be.

Dr. Chris Mason: Regardless that it sounds futuristic to have robots aiding robots, that’s what already occurs in manufacturing for cars, giant boats, and even spacecraft. I feel extra automation will even be utilized in library prep, and we are going to see nearly every thing automated, from the mobile specimen and tissue preparation, proper by to the tip of the experiment.

Wanting forwards, do you suppose there are some other imminent drivers of change in the identical method COVID-19 was, akin to area exploration or the colonization of Mars?

Dr. Chris Mason: I feel it will likely be extra multi-omic. Taking a look at DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolites from the identical cells, you’ll see extra metrics being measured throughout extraction and past. I feel the long run will result in elevated quantification and shall be a good time to be a scientist. You could possibly argue that immediately is already one of the best time to be a scientist, however I feel it should simply proceed to get higher if all goes in keeping with plan.

Dr. Klaus Lun: It’s the century of biology.

About Dr. Klaus Lun

Dr. Klaus Lun is Government Vice President and Head of the Life Sciences Enterprise division at Tecan. Klaus joined the corporate in June 2013 as EVP Company Improvement and a member of the Administration Board of the Tecan Group. In February 2017, he took over the position as EVP, main Tecan’s complete end-user enterprise division. Klaus studied biology on the College of Bayreuth and Tübingen, and gained his doctorate in neurobiology on the College of Heidelberg and an MBA in Enterprise Administration from the College of Mannheim.

About Dr. Chris Mason

Dr. Chris Mason is a professor of genomics, physiology, and biophysics at Weill Cornell Drugs. Chris can be one of many founding Administrators of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction and co-founder of 4 biotechnology startup corporations. He accomplished his twin BS in genetics and biochemistry from the College of Wisconsin–Madison, adopted by a PhD in genetics from Yale College.

About Tecan

Tecan is a number one international supplier of automated laboratory devices and options. Their techniques and elements assist individuals working in medical diagnostics, primary and translational analysis and drug discovery convey their science to life.

Particularly, they develop, produce, market and help automated workflow options that empower laboratories to realize extra. Their Cavro branded instrument elements are chosen by main instrumentation suppliers throughout a number of disciplines.

They work facet by facet with a spread of shoppers, together with diagnostic laboratories, pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations and college analysis facilities. Their experience extends to growing and manufacturing OEM devices and elements, marketed by their accomplice corporations. Regardless of the challenge – giant or small, easy or complicated – serving to their shoppers to realize their objectives comes first.

They maintain a number one place in all of the sectors they work in and have modified the best way issues are completed in analysis and growth labs around the globe. In diagnostics, as an example, they’ve raised the bar in relation to the reproducibility and throughput of testing.

In below 4 a long time Tecan has grown from a Swiss household enterprise to a model that’s properly established on the worldwide stage of life sciences. From pioneering days on a farm to the main position our enterprise assumes immediately – empowering analysis, diagnostics and plenty of utilized markets around the globe