Automation Technologies
Paul Lomax
Product Manager
SPT Labtech
Melbourn, England, United Kingdom
Merck is the latest company to adopt acoustic tubes at the core of its compound management strategy. The team at Merck Rahway had reviewed the company's entire compound workflow with the aim of developing a seamless and fully integrated solution for achieving greater efficiencies: improving the preservation of stock compounds and reducing the time required to process customer requests.
Acoustic tube technology was launched four years ago as the outcome of a collaboration between Labcyte, Titian, and Azenta Life Sciences (formerly Brooks Life Sciences), working in partnership with AstraZeneca. Since then, broader adoption of the new technology has been slower than some might have predicted, mainly because of level of investment required and the potential disruption when transferring an entire compound library from one tube type to another.
Until recently, technical challenges meant the choice of solutions available for processing acoustic tubes was severely limited – especially for automated storage solutions. In fact, only one vendor offered such a solution, which suffered from the drawback of being large in scale with limited integration capabilities.
The launch of SPT Labtech's comPOUND acoustic system in 2021 offered Merck a modular approach: the capacity to meet current requirements with easy scalability for future expansions. The comPOUND system stores and retrieves samples across a pneumatic network of comPOUND stores and a remote “connect” system. The connect can be used as a standalone or as part of an integrated work cell. Merck saw great potential and, after several months of evaluation of the comPOUND system, went ahead with a collaborative project with SPT Labtech, Biosero, and Titian.
This poster provides an overview of the comPOUND sample management technologies developed by SPT Labtech. It outlines the development of a reliable and integrated solution for the storage, retrieval, and transportation of acoustic tubes. The system will be implemented at Merck Rahway in the spring of 2022.
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