ARC - Autonomous Research Continuity - A national resource to protect UK life sciences R&D against disruption
Lead Participant:
ARCTORIS LTD
Abstract
2020 has witnessed business disruption like no-other in living memory. In the life sciences sector, laboratories were abruptly closed, immediately bringing R&D to a standstill. Pharmaceutical companies in the UK, with tens of thousands of staff each; over 40 top tier universities each with active research programmes; numerous biotechnology companies across the country; even Public Health England and its national biobank resource - all were shut down from March 23rd to May 10th with far-reaching repercussions. Life sciences laboratories operate complex, multi-stage processes such as the growth of human cells and tissues in vitro for research purposes. Termination of these processes is destructive, irretrievable and costly. Not to mention the delays to life-saving new treatments.
Until now, life science laboratories were operated by, and dependent on, humans. The laboratories of tomorrow, however, will be autonomous, robotically operated, and therefore resilient to disruption, and compatible with the evolving nature of work.
ARC will exploit existing proprietary robotic laboratory infrastructure within Arctoris, the leading outsourced autonomous laboratory, and innovate to establish new competencies that will underpin a national laboratory continuity resource, the 'Arc'. The Arc will operate fully autonomously to salvage disrupted processes and provide continuity to research activity for life science laboratories in pharmaceutical, academic and biotech research centres nation-wide. The Arc will become the UK's trusted and resilient resource for the provision of cellular, biochemical and biophysical experimental processes along the entire pre-clinical drug discovery and development pipeline - from target and hit identification all the way until in vivo studies.
Arctoris, with its robotic facilities in Oxford, UK, is the global leader in fully automated experimentation but does not yet have the technology required to fully support sufficient scale and diversity of automated processes to secure national R&D efforts. ARC will expand on proprietary robotic and computational technologies that are currently used for delivering fully automated drug discovery experiments and enable the Arc to support nation-wide life sciences research activities. Through ARC Arctoris will complete a plan of experimental development to expand the breadth of robotic cell handling competency and the computational orchestration of processes to sustain hundreds of activities in parallel.
ARC, and its experimental development plans, represent the greatest chance for UK life sciences R&D to step forward into a stable and resilient future and to maintain our position of global competitiveness in the face of a rapidly evolving and demanding work environment.
Until now, life science laboratories were operated by, and dependent on, humans. The laboratories of tomorrow, however, will be autonomous, robotically operated, and therefore resilient to disruption, and compatible with the evolving nature of work.
ARC will exploit existing proprietary robotic laboratory infrastructure within Arctoris, the leading outsourced autonomous laboratory, and innovate to establish new competencies that will underpin a national laboratory continuity resource, the 'Arc'. The Arc will operate fully autonomously to salvage disrupted processes and provide continuity to research activity for life science laboratories in pharmaceutical, academic and biotech research centres nation-wide. The Arc will become the UK's trusted and resilient resource for the provision of cellular, biochemical and biophysical experimental processes along the entire pre-clinical drug discovery and development pipeline - from target and hit identification all the way until in vivo studies.
Arctoris, with its robotic facilities in Oxford, UK, is the global leader in fully automated experimentation but does not yet have the technology required to fully support sufficient scale and diversity of automated processes to secure national R&D efforts. ARC will expand on proprietary robotic and computational technologies that are currently used for delivering fully automated drug discovery experiments and enable the Arc to support nation-wide life sciences research activities. Through ARC Arctoris will complete a plan of experimental development to expand the breadth of robotic cell handling competency and the computational orchestration of processes to sustain hundreds of activities in parallel.
ARC, and its experimental development plans, represent the greatest chance for UK life sciences R&D to step forward into a stable and resilient future and to maintain our position of global competitiveness in the face of a rapidly evolving and demanding work environment.
Lead Participant | Project Cost | Grant Offer |
|---|---|---|
Participant |
||
| ARCTORIS LTD |
People |
ORCID iD |
| Thomas Fleming (Project Manager) |