Robotic Drug Discovery - Case Study Example

Title: ROBOTIC DRUG DISCOVERY (Student Name) (Tutor's Name) (Institution) 26 April, 2008 Table of Contents Page 1.0 Introduction...........................................................................................................1 2.0 Classification of pharmaceutical robots.................................................................2 3.0 Laboratory Automations........................................................................................2 3.1 Shorter time and lower cost.......................................................................2 3.2 Extend of automation.................................................................................3 3.3 Flexibility vs. Specificity...........................................................................3 3.4 Levels of sophistication.............................................................................4 3.5 Making Micro arrays..................................................................................4 3.6 Assaying Applications................................................................................4 3.7 Lab Management Systems.........................................................................5 4.0 Roles played by robots...........................................................................................5 4.1 R & D Robots.............................................................................................5 4.2 Pharm Production.......................................................................................7 4.3 Pack Them Up, Stack Them Up.................................................................8 5.0 Robots efficiency in packaging.............................................................................10 6.0 The consequences of Robots.................................................................................11 6.1 Advantages of Robots................................................................................11 6.2 Disadvantages of robots............................................................................12 7.0 Conclusion............................................................................................................12 1.0 Introduction Robots have being increasingly used in pharmaceutical development to assist to meet decreasing drug development time, reducing the costs and increasing the productivity. Hence, a robot is a device which performs variable series which are programmed manipulators and includes activities such as weighing, extraction, dilution, filtration, sample identification and moving objects. These robots are grouped in terms of movement of the arm (Peter, 1996, pp.12). Usually human beings have five components which are the body structure, muscle system, sensory system, power source and brain. There are additional attributes that cannot be seen in the physical terms this includes the morality and the intelligence. Robots on the other hand are made of the components. It usually has a movable physical structure, sensor system, a motor, power supply and a computer brain. Hence, they are machines that just copy what humans do. The introduction of robots to the field of medicine has attracted various robotics research groups who are developing or already developed a diverse application of robotics in the clinical medicine and its exploitation of physiological capabilities of such robots. The main developments of robots are in the fields of surgery, rehabilitation, diagnosis, prosthetics and pharmaceuticals. Industrial robots are usually used in production of drugs (Michael, 1999, pp. 45). Robots in surgery are concentrated on development of such tools or robotic, hand held mechatronic, tele-operated dexterous tools. While rehabilitation robots are usually involved in the intelligence machines such as assistance to the disabled and elderly persons. These machines assist people to do everyday activities and being servants and also companions to this people. 2.0 Classification of pharmaceutical robots. For laboratory robots there are three geometries that are used to classify them. This are: i. Cylindrical geometries: this is where the robot arms are parallel in both arms and are pivoted at a central point. ii. Anthropomorphic geometries: this is multi joints in terms of the physical structure and it has human like configurations. iii. Cartesian geometries: it contains three perpendicular mutual axes. These three types of robots have being used in various applications in the pharmaceutical industry. But, the most applicable are the anthropomorphic and cylindrical which are usually flexible and it can be able to transfer, weigh, extract and filtrate the samples (Bennet, 2007). There are usually four steps that are taken by these robots to accomplish their tasks and include: sample preparation, sampling, sample measurement and manipulation of the data from these samples to suite the customers needs. Most robots are used in the automation process since its labor intensive. Automation has being applied in various forms which includes; release of raw materials, in-process testing, stability testing and release of the end products. During pharmaceutical analysis assay, its uniformity and dissolution are frequently used by the automation. Validation is a documented report that gives assurance of taking some steps which will generate a product and meet all conditions that were stipulated. Rules such as qualification are used to check the credibility of certain process and it's also refereed as “4Qs” model (Bennet 2007). 3.0 Laboratory Automations 3.1 Shorter time and lower cost. The time that was initially required to complete a certain research work has drastically reduced. Also, such duties can be undertaken at the shortest time with fewer hands. Hence, the tedious duties that were associated with technicians and scientist have drastically reduced and leave the time for the scientist to think creatively and analyze the implications of the project. Robots have reduced the operation costs and increased productivity. 3.2 Extend of automation There applications range from basic pipetting to high throughput operation base. Hence, the amount of automation depends on the type of needs of the proposal. Scientist can easily automate various laboratory procedures with little complexity e.g. filling assays, washing and rinsing. While advanced procedures like the genome or DNA researchers requires complex automation (Nigel 2006). Before the decision to automate a laboratory, there are various questions that should be based, this includes: i. Why the laboratory requires an automated machine. ii. The type of assay format that the laboratory will use. iii. Level of technicality. iv. What are the end negative effects after implications? v. Examines what are available in the market. 3.3 Flexibility vs. Specificity Many manufactures tries to develop there automation into a fully flexible application. But, these robots are later validated to solve specific tasks and assays. On the other hand there are those factories that requires specific automation to solve something which is specific and consistently. The use of plastics moulds have increased the specific duties in handling liquid volumes e.g. the disposable pipette tips and the 384 and 1536 micro titer plates( Rashi, 2002, pp. 67). 3.4 Levels of sophistication There are various duties that take place in the laboratories this includes; washing, filling and rinsing the tubes. Hence, these duties are reduced by purchasing of simple automated equipments that can solve these problems. When the number of the plates is highly sophisticated machines are required. Hence the use of fully or semi automated work stations yields more results. Other duties which are more sophisticated include the gripping of tubes to empty them or move from one position to the next. These machines are usually flexible and can perform various tasks when modified. 3.5 Making Micro arrays A micro array is usually a regular pattern which consists of spots which are on the surface of the slide which is made of an inert material with the help of robot systems termed as micro arrays. This chip holds a lot or a variety of reagents and samples at the same time. The sample is placed on a specific instrument and the information is read. 3.6 Assaying Applications Assaying is a very sensitive process which requires the utmost care. This is to prevent contamination or altering the contents of the inter cellular. This process is usually applied to reduce enzyme degradation when working with proteins and nucleic acid in a way called native DNAse, protease molecules and RNAse. Of late there are specialized automations that can read specific living cells and within natural conditions. A process called fluorescent tags is used as interaction to be checked or detected. 3.7 Lab Management Systems. With the help of high throughput systems (H.T.S) means that there is an increase in amount of data. Hence, to track information and data is useful and requires a data management system. This then requires a method called Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). This automation groups all data that is available through test or specific common attributes (Roderick, 2002, pp.120). This machines can obtain data directly from the instruments hence reduces the chances of errors. This also means this automation method will allow many samples to be worked on without loosing track. 4.0 Roles played by robots In the field of pharmaceuticals, there are important roles that robots play in situations of complex processes in researching and development, its production and packing of the drugs. There are various machines that are concerned in the production of the drugs, these are: 4.1 R & D Robots. High Throughput Screening (H.T.S) is a process that is used to screen a large amount of compounds to be tested. After checking and testing the right compound it can be used for drugs development. This process which uses million types of compounds is well suited if roots are used. Before the introduction and widespread of use of robots in places that are associated with discovery of drugs, the researchers would screen the compounds manually by the use of pipette. This could take a long period of time e.g. three to five years to go through the required sample and obtain the favorable leads. In the past time, the researchers on drugs could screen about 30 drugs which are viewed as candidates weekly. With the introduction of robotic H.T.S, there is a possibility that up to about 100,000 compounds can be checked within a day (Nigel 2006). Scientist can only use three months to screen a full sample collection and the leads are obtained. The leads are then modified chemically with the help of this robots up to extent that a suitable compound which has the right attributes is found. The equipments that are robotically operated in the pharmaceutical research enables thousands of both synthetic and natural created products to be analyzed. They are also associated in the creation of pharmaceutical libraries and laboratory testing. This is the part of drug discovery. Laboratory testing that can be accomplished by robots includes urinalysis and blood testing. By the use of laboratory robotics experimental steps and procedures have eliminated human tedium and also the miscalculations during washing and transfer of the specimens. This experiment usually includes fluorescent, radioactive, and luminescent analysis. The laboratory robotics has been designed and developed in which they are integrated and usually consists of multiple robots arms, incubators, pipetting stations, plate washers and reagent detectors. The other tasks that are associated with robots that work in the pharmaceutical research include the preparations of sample work. These robots include those machines that handle the liquid and shake the candidate compound gently. They also move the associated trays to different locations in the laboratory where the process is performed and where examination of the sample experiments is done. Also they are applicable to those situations where stability of the temperatures and where temperature can affect the researchers. This is achieved through robots moving the wanted samples in and out of the oven which have specified incubation time (David, 1985, pp. 230). High density assay layouts are usually applied by pharmaceuticals users who want to maintain profitability. These assay layouts are usually made of small wells in which liquids are examined in a group of 384, 864, 1536, 3456 or 9600. The aim of this layout is to reduce the assay volumes to a specified sub-micro liter level. This makes the machine and the system to be a low volume that can handle liquid material capability. 4.2 Pharm Production. Pharmaceutical production usually uses a low payload capacity which is not greater than four kilograms. Others can have small payloads like 100 grams which usually contains test vials, an amount which is smaller than what is scrutinizing. An example is the CRS robot which is used for drug discovery which has a payload of one kilogram. This CataLyst-3 has a reach distance of 660mm which includes a gripper which enables it to serve its duties. There are usually some difference between those robots that participate in pharmaceuticals production and those which do general robotic manufacturing. Hence, a pharmaceutical production is just a material or tool that handles a problem. Hence, the main difference is that it requires a tight or specific software interface, in which around 60 to 70 different types of devices are needed to be connected to a single robot. This means it was a challenge for this various experiments to fit into a robot environment since most of the experiments were designed and developed manually (Joseph, 1998, pp. 45). The pharmaceuticals robots usually require more precision, faster cycle times and speed compared to other robotic operations. An example is auto production which the cycle times are more than four seconds. Pharmaceuticals machine robots usually require a small cycle time that is less than four seasons. Robots operation in pharmaceuticals requires a great deal for clean lines. Usually a class100 is required to be maintained in a room environment. To achieve this, a method called purging is used. The area operation is thoroughly cleaned and the pressure is kept higher than the outside so as to prevent dirt from entering. Also the frequent use of stainless steel which is easy to clean is used. Another method or important function of certain medical devices can be seen in the Flow's company which deals with device assembly. They use two axis pick and they design robots for such applications. They also develop test kits for organizations such as Bayer and for Baxter health Care and they also produce intravenous bags. The robot produces Hepa filters, inhalers and springs. And they sterilize the syringes by the use of gamma radiation (William, 1995, pp. 154). With the help of the robots during the sterilizing of springers they protect people from harmful gamma radiations. This is when robots takes syringes from a pallet and puts them on conveyor belt which radiates the syringes. And the end of the belt another robot repalletizes the boxes. The robots also help in code identification of the cell cultures. The cultures may sometimes contain around 100,000 vials which hold the cell sample. The robotic which is called vision system will keep track and picks the potential and useful compounds. 4.3 Pack Them Up, Stack Them Up. Usually all products are packed and inspected after their production. Also pharmaceuticals have to pass these procedures. Any type of medicines are packed using blister packs which keeps the standards of cleanliness and also assists the patients to keep the track of the daily dosage that they are supposed to take. The robots usually fills a blister package with the required amount of dosage e.g. single or multiple. Then they move the packaged blister into a box. Usually a robot can palletize around five to seven picks within a minute and a total of about twenty boxes at a time. This blister packs with dosages that range from 12 to 18 at every two seconds. A vision system usually inspects each blister pack to ensure that they were filled with the right amount of dosage and checks through scanning the presence of broken tablets. If there is a problem and the system detects it is diverted from the conveyor line (Roderick, 2002, pp. 97). The packing of tablets is fast but slower when compared to bottling of beverages. This is so as to reduce the breakage. The speeds that are used for packaging are usually around 30 per minute. On the other hand the pediatric products are usually packed at a rate of 30 to 60 within a minute. While other products that are sold fast such as the Tylenol usually are packed 200 to 300 pills within a minute. With the help of a specialized gripper an approximate of 15 to 30 bottles are clasped at the same time and placed in cartons. But, if the items are for special purposes they take a slower time. An example is from Sagan which they use as a lice shampoo. This lice shampoo is required the consumer will just purchase the shampoo without the applicator. This process is applicable to such items as inhalers. Some robots can pack and fill around 50,000 bottles within a day. The robot usually accumulates the empty bottles and the medication in question. Then the robot checks for the prescriptions and fills the bottle and places it on a conveyor which the pharmacist has to check. Then the prescription is send to a specific individual or pharmacy. An example is in Auto Med system where about 16 bottles are filled within the same time. The bottle is first labeled and moved to a filling point. A digital image is then used to check and inspect the bottle. Then the bottle is then capped. The robot then picks the bottle and puts in a sorting area. With the help of a conveyor the bottle is transferred to a pharmacist who checks it contents. If there is additional to be added it is moved to that specified area (Mila, 1991, pp. 23). An important addition that is not available in common type of manufacturing is a facility that is used to track the item after it goes out of the production facility. A vision system is usually used to code the date of the lot, which contains a specific data file which is used to track a specified bottle. This system also uses photos to find bottle of pills after it has left the production place when there is a recall or there was a presence of tempering. Other models of robots such as the Cognex vision system is used to check whether a specified drug meets Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A) which is a rule that checks the electronic pharmaceutical records. This rules are 21 CFR part II which on quality during packaging and laboratory activities. 5.0 Robots efficiency in packaging. The frequent changes that are in the market such as effects to beverage, food , health and other sectors have also affect the packaging of the health care. Hence, the flexibility of robots makes them applicable to such situations. The use of robots has continued to become easier each time. Also the cost that is associated with robots has drastically reduced. Before, they were harder to program and were also not intuitive. Most of these difficulties that are associated with the production of robots have thinned out. This is because of PC based technologies that uses windows on one side. Facilities that include drag and drop have replaced the laborious and mistake prone use of key stroking. The creation of programs and its storage has continued to be easily changed each time (Joseph, 1998, pp. 76). The time that is associated with failure is reduced and there application has greatly improved the accuracy of the process. This is because the handling and the transfer of material in accuracy terms is important. This also makes it possible to reach the tight tolerances level. In are likes of the Baxter where all processes are fulfilled with the use of robots from packing to palletizing. This has improved the efficiency, reduction of contamination and the reduction of the operating costs which are the main benefits. The increase in flexibility of the robots has made the robots to be more important in the development of programming and related activities and space that the robots occupy is minimized when compared to people performing same task, hence reduction in interruptions that is usually associated with human factor. This leads to a reduction of gowning and hair net costs. The person who integrates the system is important because the end effectors come into play after utilizing the capabilities that are expressed by the integrator. This means that the integrator has to know the conditions that are associated with packaging. These factors include sterility requirements and container contact and other factors. It means that the importance of the integrator is as important as picking he real robot builder. 6.0 The consequences of Robots. Any device that comes to real term application usually has advantages and disadvantages. The followings are the consequences of using robots in pharmaceutical industry. 6.1 Advantages of Robots Quality: The robots usually have the capacity that allows the sharp change of product quality. This is because all applications are done with great precision and a high rate of repeatability each time. This level of repetition is not easy to achieve when other means are used. Production: Since the robots are associated with speed, then products that are produced will be a lot. Also the robots work full time and with constant speeds without sleeping, breaks, vacations hence have the potential to produce more compared to a human worker. Safety: They usually increase the safety at the work place. This is through the fact that the workers will perform duties such as supervision. They then don't have to work in a place where there are dangerous applications and also the settings are hazardous. Savings: When the safety of the workers is assured then there is a great value in financial savings. This means that the health care status of the workers become fewer and the insurance policies of the employers will be drastically reduced. Also due to the fact that the robots continue to work full time then the time wastage is reduced. Because the movements and any actions that they commit to these selves are accurate, then it means that fewer materials are wasted. 6.2 Disadvantages of robots. Expenses: The initial cost that is incurred during the initial accusation of the robots is high. This is seen when the business owners are targeting most of there finances to robot equipments. This then means that cost of automation should focus on the business financial budgets. Automation: Most laboratories are techniques are not fully developed for automation. This makes the use of robots in these laboratories not to have high level of operations. Also there is difficulty in terms of visual analysis, comparison and recognition of a certain characteristics that is required. Employment: Certain duties that were supposed to be done by the technicians and scientist have been reduced and the robots do it most of the time. Duties like washing the apparatus and packing of the drugs have been turned into robotic terms (Brian, 2003, pp. 57). 7.0 Conclusion. Robots have come through many processes to the state they are known. Pharmaceutical automation and laboratories have increased the efficiency of this institutions and delivery of the services that are required. Combination of various tools and equipments has reached an extent that there operations are equivalent to human capability and others have surpassed this. New data management systems and various computer systems have advanced there developments and usage in the day to day activities. Work Cited Source Bennett, B. Pharmaceutical Robotic Applications, 12 May, 2007. Available from, http://www.roboticsonline.com/public/articles/details.cfm?id=698 (Retrieved 26 April, 2008) Brian, B. Practical Pharmaceutical Laboratory Automation, New York: CRC Press. 2003. David, J. Automation of Pharmaceutical Operations, California: Aster. 1985. Joseph, F. Automation and Validation of Information in Pharmaceutical Processing, London: Informa Health Care. 1998. Michael, F. The practices of human genetics, New York: Springer. 1999 Michael, H. Laboratory Automation, New York: Peachpit Press. 2003. Mila, S. Hazardous Waste Measurements, New York: CRC Press. 1991. Nigel, North. 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