Gotta have my drugs, man! But short on cheddar!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Cost is one of the biggest obstacles to getting the medicine we need. How can we make meds cheaper?
Enter Tianwei Dai and team from the University of Liverpool. They tried integrating a robotic coworker seamlessly into the production line.
By automating individual tools and instruments, smaller robots help transport chemical products for drug analysis. Meanwhile, a separate desktop computer guides these simple operations and performs quality checks on the chemistry.
Results? This automated system outperforms the speed of humans analyzing chemical data in drug development. Just not for more complex tasks!
This modular robotics system can better streamline production of medicines with reduced costs.
This could save money and lives! Not sure about jobs though.
Reference: Dai, T., Vijayakrishnan, S., Szczypiński, F.T. et al. Autonomous mobile robots for exploratory synthetic chemistry. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08173-7