Event Recap: Lab of the Future Amsterdam 2022
The collaborative spirit in the life sciences sector is at an all-time high. The unprecedented level of cooperation across academia, biopharmaceutical companies, solution providers, startups, and government agencies in the face of one of the biggest public health challenges in recent history, has proven what’s possible when we work towards a common goal. It also underscores the importance of tools to support rapid research, development, and deployment of much needed therapeutics at scale.
The Lab of the Future Congress examines the role of new and emerging technologies
The Lab of the Future Congress examines the role of new and emerging technologies to unlock advancements in the scientific research lab through the digitalization of processes in the modern laboratory to better handle challenges now and in the future. Strateos had the opportunity to connect with industry peers at our booth during this year’s congress in Amsterdam.
Live demos of the LodeStar software allowed scientists to build experiments in Amsterdam during the conference and have them executed virtually in real time at our labs in California. During the demonstrations, attendees took the time to discuss with us how this system will help them in meeting their needs for lab regulatory compliance, data management for scientific work, and digitalization and management of processes, amongst many other advantages.
Strateos CEO, Mark Fischer-Colbrie and Executive Director of Commercial Operations, Marc Siladi also had the chance to speak during the event, and we will provide a brief recap of their presentations here.
Keynote Address: Beyond Digital: The Next Era of Transformation is Happening
The digital transformation of life sciences has been building momentum over recent years yet companies struggle with where and how to start. It’s easy to get caught up in the transformative potential but getting these new systems to work cohesively and fit within an organization's broader goals can be a major roadblock. Previous attempts to transform life sciences failed due to this piecemeal approach with disparate technologies. To use Mark’s analogy, it is like going out and buying all the best parts for a car, and not knowing how to put the parts together to create a functional automobile.
Automated Life Sciences, Assembly Not Required
Making Science Accessible, Right out of the Box
Strateos’ approach is different—cloud-enabled lab automation solutions that are useable, right out of the box—no assembly required. Strateos is breaking down the biggest barriers to scientific innovation:
• Overburdened researchers and siloed processes, data, technology, automation and scientists
• Inability to consistently produce, record, retrieve and reproduce high quality data
• Lengthy cycle times for design-make-test-analyze (DMTA)
• Cost per data point
• Restrictions on harnessing AI/machine learning, small and big data science tools, etc
With LodeStar, scientists have better access (control our lab or yours from anywhere in the world) and the ability to generate reproducible, AI-enabled data to reach actionable insights faster and accelerate the discovery of new therapeutics. Successful digital transformation using our platform has been shown to reduce the DMTA time from chemical design to biological testing to 4 days vs. 5-6 weeks using conventional methods.
The LodeStar Software Difference
Strateos is poised to have the same transformative effect on life sciences labs in the same way that Amazon, Uber and TSMC have created disruptive and positive change within their sectors.
Breaking Down the Barriers to Scientific Innovation
Imagine a world where scientists can easily generate reliable metabolomics, lipidomics, and biomarkers data and aggregate it from multiple steps in drug discovery. Further, imagine that these researchers are doing this from anywhere in the world to derive meaningful insights from instruments in a lab thousands of miles away, without the need for researchers on the other end. This capability will lead to truly personalized critical medicines, reductions in human error, and to increase productivity through accelerating discovery.
Track Talk: Automating and Scaling the Impact of Protein Engineering Workflows from Your Local Coffee Shop
While other industries embraced transformation with unified software and automation, the same transformation in life sciences labs has been slow, with labs remaining much the same as they have over the past 100 years. During Marc’s track talk, he outlines how Strateos’ remote and delocalized cloud lab has helped facilitate the digital transformation in life sciences. Shifting the paradigm from simple hardware solutions to highly connected and automated instrument networks and informatics is providing scientists with unprecedented tools to execute closed-loop fully automated DMTA with speed, quality, and at scale.
Strateos’ LodeStar cloud software creates an entirely new generation of the lab ecosystem solving long-standing pain points in sciences. First and foremost, Researchers can now focus on how they scale their impact. Scientists can leverage new technologies without the increased regulatory compliance overhead. Electronic lab notebooks and Laboratory information management systems, along with lab-focused and science-focused artificial intelligence and data science systems that have long been automated and integrated into one-off, siloed, configurations can now be orchestrated across all laboratories by focusing on the organization's overall procedures for the lab. LodeStar serves as the hub for your lab operating system, capable of orchestrating lab workflows through a simple user interface.
How can this be done for the research lab, or any other, without major disruptions?
This is accomplished by leveraging the lab procedures as a roadmap for transformation. These procedures identify all resources and efforts primed for transformation, whether it is ongoing digitalization or implementing transformative scale.
For example, LodeStar will join your system of record (LIMS, LES, ELN, etc) that holds the lab samples and provides digitization of results, E-signature, and, audit history with the physical instruments to execute the work, via new or existing robotics. LodeStar will then control the robotics and accept the results returned electronically. Next, Lodestar will run an analysis on the results with the right artificial intelligence or data science tools for the job then determine any additional experiments to be run. From this point push data to the reporting software to notify the researcher, and automatically initiate the next steps for this effort. In this way, LodeStar is the hub in this new lab ecosystem automating islands of automation in your local lab, as well as at your preferred contract research organization (CRO).
A New Lab Ecosystem
Artificial intelligence as an enabler in the automated lab
As we move more into the automated and remote lab, the interpolation of artificial intelligence becomes a springboard to scaling impact. As an organization, we provide the services, support, and infrastructure needed to bring digitalization together with transformation in a measurable and actionable way. With customer processes and systems that are well prepared to interact with the organization on the digitalized plane, we leverage AI algorithms to provide scientists and organizations with reproducible data and insights that drive discovery and are directed at improving value, collaboration, costs, and overall operations. These insights may be directionally guiding method development or predicting results for novel molecules.
What are we doing today, and where do we want to take you, tomorrow?
Marc wrapped up his talk by showcasing some real-world examples of Strateos’ software at work across different disciplines within life sciences—from a protein engineering project with the Romero Lab at UWisc to the DARPA-funded SD2 project aimed at developing data-driven methods to accelerate scientific discovery and robust design in domains such as synthetic biology.
Leaving the stage, Marc left a vision for the future of science that portrayed automation, labs, scientists, robotics, machine learning, data, multi-organization structures, cloud providers, and vendors working in collaboration toward mutually beneficial continued improvement that is measurable and predictable.
The Lab of the Future Congress was a great opportunity to connect and engage with groups from all over the world. Strateos is committed now more than ever to being at the forefront as we reshape the labs of the future with seamless automation and software solutions, coupled with an experienced implementation and support team that drive integration.
Click here to learn more about Strateos and LodeStar