AstraZeneca unveil drug discovery robot

Biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca has unveiled its NiCola-B drug discovery robot, capable of performing industrial scale experiments in the search for new, life-saving medicines.

The robot can test 300,000 compounds a day and will support experiments in 40-50 projects per year, against 40 million potential drugs. It is also suited to work alongside humans by using its unique ability to share their work space.

NiCola-B uses ‘acoustic displacement’ technology to move tiny volumes of liquid from storage tubes into assay plates to test potential new medicines for different diseases.

AstraZeneca hope that these features allow NiCola-B to make smarter, faster and cheaper drug discoveries. It also aims to help the company’s scientists select the most viable compounds to fuel the drug discovery pipeline to potentially deliver the next breakthrough medicines.

The company is also beginning drug discovery projects with, charity organisation Cancer Research UK and non-departmental government body Medical Research Council. The two groups will have unprecedented access to NiCola-B via AstraZeneca’s Open Innovation Programme, which creates research collaborations outside of AstraZenenca.