Abstracts of papers presented at the International Symposium on Laboratory Automation and Robotics (October 1992)

s of papers presented at the International Symposium on Laboratory Automation and Robotics (October 1992) Keynote 1: Practical aspects of laboratory automation in pharmaceutical development Eugene J. McGonigle, Schering-Plough Research Institute, Kenilworth, NJ An early perception of laboratory automation was ’automated analysis’ and its focus on the manipulative aspects of analytical chemistry. Automation freed the chemist to carry out other tasks in pharmaceutical analysis. With the preference for HPLC in pharmaceutical analysis, autosamplers and injectors were the earliest and most obvious improvements. This was followed by the advent of computers and user-friendly software to facilitate chromatographic measurements and calculations. Today, robotics, in combination with laboratory automation and data management systems, can effect completely automated analytical methods in which many, if not all, of the physical manipulations require minimal chemist intervention. Broad in scope, modern laboratory automation facilitates scheduling, analysis, data handling and processing, reporting and statistics, as well as project and resource accountability. The payback from using this technology is obvious. Operator manipulations, variability and error are minimized. Sample throughput and turnover can be optimized. Laboratory productivity can be monitored, thereby increasing .credibility. However, nothing is free so there are ’costs’ as well. Validation is more extensive and critical. Entire laboratories can be vulnerable to computer malfunction. Eugene McGonigle discussed these considerations with perspective to the practical utilization of laboratory automation in research and development laboratory. Keynote 2: Rational drug design, planned serendipity and the place ofautomation in pharmaceutical lead discovery Sean O’Connor, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Walling)Cord, CT The two decades from 1970 to 1990 saw a very rapid escalation in the cost of bringing a new prescription drug to market. This, together with political pressure to restrain price increases, the appearance of the first megadrugs ($1 billion-plus in annual sales) and the perception that all was not well with traditional medicinal chemistry, made the senior management of many pharmaceutical companies extremely susceptible to the allure of’rational drug design’. Sean O’Connor argued that the development, during this same period, ofprogrammable material handling equipment and its use in high throughput screening, served as a corrective to what, otherwise, was becoming a headlong lemming charge in pursuit of simplistic answers.