The automation revolution upstream of the life sciences

Finally, because of the particularity of the laboratory automation industry, it will involve scientific instruments, reagent consumables, automation equipment, information software and other different formats in the process of commercial landing, and are in a stage of rapid growth, in total, the global market size of nearly 200 billion US dollars.

However, because the market is still in the early stage of development and lacks typical benchmarking cases, large-scale application is still out of the question. Therefore, some investors jokingly: "There is no point in talking about scale now, and it is practical to run several customers and open the market."

Evolution logic: The desire for a "black light lab"

Although it has been the attention of the venture capital circle that is used to "chasing the new", laboratory automation is not a new thing, and because of its rich connotation and diversity of scenes, a unified concept has not yet been formed.

In general, laboratory automation refers to the use of a variety of automatic testing instruments and computers and other means to achieve experiment and data processing, so as to reduce the manual operation of experimental personnel and improve work efficiency. The automatic nucleic acid detection equipment and automatic distribution system spawned by the epidemic are typical. Technology is advancing, functions are improving, application scenarios are expanding, and laboratory automation has become a dynamic concept that is iterating at any time.

Maggar technology drawing

Laboratory automation originated in the field of clinical testing and was proposed by Japan in 1981. In the 1990s, commercialized laboratory automation systems entered the labor-scarce markets of Japan, Europe and the United States, and cultivated several well-known brands in the industry since then, such as Hitachi, Beckman, Decon, etc. These brand equipment followed into the Chinese market and slowly rolled out, and local brands also rose later.

Behind the development of the industry is also accompanied by the mature evolution of the form of laboratory automation, which has brought about the improvement of detection flux, the extension of the scene, the gradual opening of the experimental closed loop, the improvement of flexibility and ease of use, and the gradual reduction of unit cost.

At present, according to the degree and scale of automation, laboratory automation can be roughly divided into four levels: single-module form automation, workstation form automation, assembly line form automation, and robot form intelligent. They are not purely full alternative evolution relationships, but rather match different product formats based on customer profiles for cost needs, throughput needs, research and clinical needs. From the functional point of view, laboratory automation as a whole is evolving from the direction of assisting people to replacing people.

In China, the degree of automation in most laboratories is still mainly in the form of single modules; Only some laboratories in the field of workstation form, the degree of integration is limited, the price in the domestic market is mostly at the level of millions of yuan, customers include pharmaceutical companies, CDC, third-party testing centers, etc., representative companies are Thermo Field, Beckman, Agilent, Deken, Hamilton, etc.

In addition, there are parts of the pipeline form automation (Total laboratory automation, referred to as TLA), which through the guide rail series adjacent functional areas, to achieve unified quality control of the whole system, can effectively reduce the human error and biological contamination rate in the experimental process, common in the laboratory - mainly biochemical immunity, The representative enterprises are Beckman, Roche, Siemens, etc., and the local manufacturers Antu biological and the above companies are fighting seriously.

Robot form intelligence is still in the early stage of development in China, has not formed large-scale application, and there is not much gap at home and abroad.

Eventually, everyone's vision points to an unattended "black light lab," in which researchers use the platform to program their ideas, and the system can be efficiently completed. However, this often needs to meet the following requirements: the introduction of advanced technologies such as manipulators, machine vision, and AI decision models; Minimal transformation of laboratory and key inspection equipment to achieve system cascade and closed-loop opening; Instead of manual completion of repetitive work or human can not reach, process result reading and judgment, automatic trial and error and final result screening output.

At present, Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical, InSI intelligence are trying in this regard. It is reported that Lilly has invested more than $300 million in the use of robotic cloud platforms to improve biological capabilities and automate chemical synthesis cycles; Insili is spending tens of millions of dollars to apply its proven AI platform to robotic lab scenarios, further enhancing its ability to automate drug discovery through a combination of "brain (AI)" + "hand (robot)."