To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
RTS Life Science
Headquarters
Manchester, UK
Years in Drug Research
15 Years
Spokesperson
David Harding
Web site
About the company
RTS Life Science is a major supplier of automated systems and products for sample management and testing within the laboratory environment. Our market encompasses drug discovery and drug delivery applications within pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, biobanking and academia. We offer a comprehensive range of automated storage and retrieval systems including associated equipment for sample preparation and automated blood fractionation. On the drug delivery side we offer a range of benchtop to fully automated solutions for inhaler and tablet testing as used in QC and pharmaceutical manufacturing applications.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
In 1998 RTS had just been ‘found’ by the drug discovery industry; major pharma companies were basing their embryonic high throughput screening programs on automation that was often developed in a ‘cottage industry’ fashion. RTS’ industrial automation background, ranging from the nuclear to the food industry was of value in providing innovative, but most importantly, robust solutions for HTS and Compound Management. At this stage automation in compound management was novel; automation that worked reliably was seen as revolutionary! Today reliability is the expectation, suppliers must be focused on delivering results for the customers.
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
Major pharma’s push into HTS around 2000, drove not only HTS automation but also a need for compounds on demand; automation for follow up was critical. More recently the drive has been to reduce costs yet increase quality. To that end we have seen focused screening push tube sample picking rates to 10,000’s per day, low sample volumes and a greater drive for on line QC in sample management.
The completion of the human genome project has opened up more questions in gene function; publicly funded biobanks and pharma led biomarker projects are presenting new problems in sample management for both DNA and other analytes.
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
Over the last 10 years the market has changed quite dramatically. The original need for ‘industrial’ quality factory type automation has diminished and the requirement has become more product based and modular, still incorporating industrial quality. Capital budgets have been reduced and the need for more efficient and effective automation increased. RTS has responded to this need with the development of a range of modular, scaleable and product based offerings spanning the drug discovery sector for small scale automated storage and retrieval products to large fully bespoke systems. Modular platforms have been designed to suit the changing screening needs and developments incorporating new vision and dispensing technologies have been introduced to aid processing.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
Drug research technology will not only need to release the researcher from mundane activities but will increasingly move from being the focal point. In much the same way that computing has moved from mainframes to user friendly desk top machines, so the major infrastructure systems of the present (sample management, HTS, etc.) will become increasingly smaller, faster and easier to use. The scientist’s focus will increasingly return to the scientific problem at hand and away from the technology.
