by Dieter Wagner, Product Manager, Thermo Fisher Scientific
As pharmaceutical companies and their research partners race to bring cutting-edge therapies to market faster than ever before, biologics research is moving at an unprecedented pace. Labs are feeling pressure to speed up development, but many are still relying on manual workflows that continue to hinder their progress.
There is a fundamental conflict between prevalent manual workflows and the need to bring therapies to market faster, but automation in the lab could provide an essential solution. While automation exists in some steps of the cell line development workflow, shaking and incubation steps often remain in manual transient transfection and clone selection. Innovative technologies, such as automated shaking incubators, can help labs overcome longstanding challenges and accelerate the drug development process.
Understanding the opportunity for automation
To meet market demands for biologics-based therapies, scientists within biologics labs must screen thousands of clones and keep growth conditions steady to ensure repeatable results, every time. Manual incubators have inherent flaws, such as abrupt stops to shaking and incubation and a high risk of contamination, that make it harder for labs to prioritize speed, accuracy and precision amid complex workflows.
Many traditional technologies lack key features that are integral to biologics workflows, such as lid clamping systems and decontamination routines. They are also missing the integration needed for labs to effectively leverage newer technologies and solutions into their workflows. Labs using automation can see significantly higher throughput, better yields and more consistent results.
These automated shaking incubators help labs produce better results and move at faster rates to discover new treatments and therapies while removing the potential for manual error that comes with traditional incubators.
The hidden costs of manual workflows
Traditional workflows require a significant amount of labor with extensive hands-on time. For scientists in the lab, typical pain points can include frequent interruptions in lab work, unstable incubator environments and the risk of contamination due to human error. Each of these pain points can have detrimental effects on the progression of new therapies.
In manual workflows, scientists need to feed the cell culture every few hours, which means multiple stops per day to remove the plates and lids, feed the sample and place it back in the incubator. With each plate transfer taking several minutes, manual workflows risk using several hours per day on tasks that could otherwise be automated.
Another common interruption in the lab – the frequent opening of the incubator door – may also have detrimental effects. The sample temperature must remain stable to produce the best results, so each time the door opens, there’s a risk of temperature change. By regularly opening the incubator door, labs also risk contamination of the sample when scientists remove plates and lids. Contaminants can also grow inside the incubator, requiring thorough cleaning every time plates are manually removed.
These interruptions and unstable conditions result in yield loss, which is a costly burden. Even if other steps of the lab’s workflow are automated, manual incubators can create a bottleneck that slows down the entire process. Next-generation technologies mitigate these challenges, delivering higher performance, better control and overall efficiency.
Streamlining biologics development with automated shaking incubation
To successfully develop new therapies and bring them to market faster, labs need to prioritize cell line stability – an essential factor in the development of biologics. From batch to batch, cells must remain fed and in ideal condition to grow at their best and most consistent rates.
In addition to the added control over the growth environment, automated shaking technology allows the cells to be in suspension culture with steady shaking. This constant movement allows oxygen to reach the surface, creates an even distribution of nutrients and keeps cells from clumping together – all of which are essential to keep the cells alive and thriving. During plate handling, the environmental conditions must remain stable, and the non-disruptive shaking during the unloading and loading ensures consistent cell growth conditions. By reducing manual handling, labs can decrease variability and improve throughput while also achieving high performance.
As labs look to maximize cell growth and support faster time-to-clone selection, automated solutions also ensure repeatable outcomes within experiments, while creating documentation that supports traceability requirements.
Novel automated shaking incubators use specifically designed well plates with unique, clamping lids to enable a true orbital shaking pattern for optimal experimental conditions. These incubators are crucial for ensuring streamlined results due to the consistency that they deliver.
Incorporating automation today to meet future demands
For biopharma labs aiming to scale biologics research and development, adopting automated incubators can lead to higher output, greater efficiency and acceleration of the scientific process. To successfully adopt automation in biologics workflows, labs should ensure that their current workflows and technologies are compatible with automation. Teams should also assess their lab’s infrastructure and make space to integrate the automated shaking incubator. Lab managers should also look to implement workflow scheduling software to help manage the automated shaking incubator and ensure that scientists are able to replicate any manual processes with new automated systems.
Smart automated incubation systems represent a significant advancement in controlled environment technology, allowing labs to optimize growth conditions for cell culture, microbial growth and other biological processes. Coupled with sophisticated data analytics platforms, these technologies establish a streamlined lab workflow that offers real-time processing of both experimental and environmental data.
In regulated environments, particularly in bioanalytical testing, the emphasis is on compliance, data integrity and documentation of environmental parameters. Automated systems can help maintain regulatory compliance through thorough process documentation, which is vital as companies look to bring cutting-edge therapies to market faster.
Incorporating automation today means that labs will be better prepared not only to speed the development of life-changing therapies, but also to adopt next-generation technologies that can further accelerate scientific discovery. The future of laboratory automation is being shaped by the convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, controlled environments and data analytics that aim to transform both research and regulated environments.
This evolution is driven by the need for increased efficiency, reproducibility and compliance while maintaining precise environmental control. The addition of automated shaking incubators provides unparalleled consistency that ultimately reduces the time it takes to conduct experiments and gather samples and data, which will ensure new therapies and treatments hit the market faster.
About the author
Dieter Wagner received his degree in Automation from the THM Friedberg and worked in sales and product management roles in several different industries including vacuum technology, optical disc, semiconductor and organic materials. During this time Dieter developed a passion for biotechnology and this led him to Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he is currently Product Manager for the Cytomat product line.