#TRANSCRIPTIC ROBOTIZE MANUAL#
#TRANSCRIPTIC ROBOTIZE SOFTWARE#

Instead, the lab, company or researchers that want to run their experiments through Transcriptic send them detailed instructions on what they want to test for, control for, and so on.

In reality, the robot to human ratio is closer to 50:50, Hodak says. Transcriptic has a team of “qualified PhD scientists and engineers” to oversee the “functionality of the workcell through internal controls and monitoring,” the company says. However, in spite of its virtualization mission and the fact that submitted protocols are handled by its “automated workcells,” Transcriptic is not without its human components.

#TRANSCRIPTIC ROBOTIZE SOFTWARE#

With money being tight in the early development, the team cobbled together this equipment, buying much of it on the cheap, and re-writing software for the machines that enables them to be controlled via its automated command system. Part of Transcriptic’s big goal is the total virtualization and automation of the life sciences research funnel, in particular its infrastructure, and the startup has collected its own fleet of robotic equipment, machines, high-powered microscopes, incubators and centrifuges in its Menlo Park lab to help it do just that. With its technology and services, Transcriptic is, in a way, looking to play the role of CRO 2.0 and reverse the traditionally lengthy sales process, slow turnarounds and high prices endemic among the industry’s incumbents. In today’s life sciences, CROs are the only option for those in need of third-party support for clinical testing and research, and, as such, now represent a multi-billion dollar industry. Basically, Transcriptic is Science-as-a-Service - or, in other words - a software and robot-enabled remote lab, which uses automation and control technology to perform studies and trials in less time than your average bear, er, Contract Research Organization (or CRO). The result is Transcriptic, a startup and service provider that aims to make the day-in-day-out process of wet lab biology research faster, cheaper and more accessible. A programmer since age six, the biology student decided to engineer a solution and give life sciences its own, custom version of Amazon Web Services.

#TRANSCRIPTIC ROBOTIZE MANUAL#

Watching researchers spend so much time waiting around to use one machine or another, and navigating a manual process where mistakes are both easy to make and costly, Hodak came to the conclusion that labs could use a little automation - and a few more robots. Beyond the fact that many labs are disconnected and aren’t networked, research itself remains a manual, hands-on process, involving a lot of moving small amounts of liquid from one tube to another or handling petri dishes. Like many others who’ve spent wasted hours of their lives in white coats, he found the fact that most labs still look and operate as they did thirty years ago frustrating.

As a biomedical engineering student at Duke, Max Hodak became intimately familiar with the sterile tedium of life in a research lab.

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