The world's largest pharmaceutical robot is expected to go online this summer at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), handling the equivalent of a month's worth of human experiments in a single day.
Occupying roughly 180 feet of floor space, the Haystack is essentially an enormous automated pharmaceutical lab that is designed to replace the labor of mixing compounds, performing experiments, and measuring reactions. Haystack throws together various combinations of compounds to see if anything lucrative comes out the other end.
Using this method to find, say, the next Pravachol - an anti-heart attack drug that last year brought in $875 million worth of sales - is a game of chance. By working efficiently and at high speeds, Haystack aims to improve the odds.
"The scale of operation required [in this approach] is way beyond the ability of human-based systems to cope without utter chaos setting in," said Willie Harrison, Haystack business manager.
"It would be akin to you trying to format a floppy disk with a bar magnet and a pair of scissors," Harrison said.
The robot contains modules for storing, retrieving, preparing and dispensing solid and liquid chemical samples in a variety of forms. Haystack works ceaselessly, in dark, environmentally controlled rooms, transporting samples between modules and out to the waiting scientists via an intelligent conveyor system. BMS said the haystack will handle an estimated 100,000 screening tests in a single day.
BMS said yesterday that the robot had passed its factory tests at the development center of its maker, The Automation Partnership, in Melbourn, England. Now, Haystack will journey across the Atlantic by cargo vessel to its final home at the BMS research facility in Wallingford, Connecticut. The company will employ it to archive and manage more than $20 million worth of proprietary compounds used for what the pharmaceutical industry calls "high throughput drug screening."
Other companies using Haystacks include Glaxo Wellcome, Smithkline Beecham and Zeneca Agrochemicals. Harrison estimates that only 20 percent of pharmaceutical companies worldwide employ a similar level of automation.
With a few mouse clicks, Haystack will make the results of its experiments available to researchers. The machine's software, called Optima, was developed by EMAX Solution Partners of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Optima gives researchers an interface to Haystack, and keeps track of inventory, tracking, clearance, and disposal of BMS' secret and valuable compounds.
"Optima is the master data model that helps to optimize scientists access to knowledge about their proprietary chemicals," said EMAX�s CEO, Jeb Connor.
"Optima links to a rich set of properties about all the chemistry," Connor said. "For example, a scientist will tell the system, 'I wish to have these chemicals for my project, and I want to know everything there is to know about these chemicals and get immediate access to them.' The software makes available all the information and properties about a sample, plus the sample itself." The application runs on the Windows 95 and NT platforms.
BMS spent $40 million to acquire its Haystack. Last year, the company invested $1.3 billion on pharmaceutical research and development.
