![]() ![]() In the case of the pharmaceuticals industry, it means starting the Food and Drug Administration approval process earlier. Plus, being able to do a series of experiments quickly allows scientists to develop viable products more quickly. This new feature will hopefully help labs get the flexibility they need in lab research so “they can focus on the creative aspects,” says Hodak.īy “creative” aspects, he means that scientists will be able to spend time and resources developing scientific breakthroughs rather than focusing on where they’ll be able to do the research. Hodak says an open API contributes to his vision of “labless” biotech companies. Right now the company has a selection of services it offers, but opening up its API will allow scientists and researchers to really customize the lab work. But what the lab does is give scientists the freedom to conduct experiments quickly and to their own specifications. Basic lab experiments can be as inexpensive as $25, says Hodak, but costs can reach into the thousands depending on how elaborate the experiment design is. Scientists send in their raw samples and Transcriptic sends back results. The company began offering automated cell cloning, genotyping, and biobanking services last year. He thought there had to be a way to slim down lab work like that so that two post-docs could conduct lab work while plunking away at a computer anywhere. So Hodak put together a robotic lab called Transcriptic. While Hodak was logging the inefficiencies of lab work, he was also noticing sleek startups on laptops operating out of coffee shops. What’s more, when two labs partner on research, they have to design experiments together, meaning a research group often has to change a given experiment based on the objectives of the partner lab. But outsourcing to other labs means researchers might not get results for eight months and the experiment will likely cost thousands of dollars, says Hodak. Rather they partner with well endowed labs that have the equipment they need. Many research labs don’t conduct their own experiments in house. It’s not only that biological lab work can be boring, its also very costly. ![]() “You’d spend all day long at the bench and waiting on the incubator to grow cells,” he said. This essentially negates the need for researchers to buy and maintain expensive equipment, while letting them conduct experiments they’d otherwise be unable to do independently.Founder Max Hodak says he came up for the idea for his robotic lab while conducting mundane basic lab research at Duke University. Scientists stipulate what they want, and Transcriptic carries out the experiment through its own in-house workcells. ![]() With that in mind, Transcriptic has been building a scalable, modern “science-as-a-service” platform that uses machine learning to expedite research. Where collaboration is involved, experiments also have to be designed in tandem, meaning that the nature of an experiment has to be altered to meet the needs of the partner. This to-ing and fro-ing can cause significant delays in terms of getting results, and it can also be an expensive way to operate. The crux of the problem that Transcriptic is trying to fix is this: Lab work can be tedious, costly, and error-prone - and many research labs actually outsource or partner with other more established research facilities to gain access to equipment that they need.
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