By Julian Goldsmith, 9 October 1998 00:15
NEWS US Pharmaceuticals company Bristol Myers-Squib (BMS) has unveiled a $10m inventory management system from a company based in Cambridge. Automation Partnership's (AP) Haystack compound inventory management system is used by the company to robotically store and prepare chemical compounds before they are tested as potential new drugs. The system can process more than 100,000 compounds a day - the same amount would have taken a month to process two years ago. It can store up to six million samples at a time. The system is controlled by software designed in-house by AP. It not only stores information on the compounds currently held and controls the robots which retrieve requested compounds, but also takes operators through the retrieval process and prioritises retrievals so that compounds can be delivered for testing exactly when needed. The BMS acquisition highlights the increasing amount of automation currently being adopted by pharmaceuticals firms over the last three years. AP also has Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham and Zeneca as Haystack customers. "These companies are all racing to discover new drugs," said Eric Kaldy, vice president of AP US. "Not in competition with each other, but because they all have to have a rapid turnaround in drug discovery to stay afloat. They have chosen Haystack to automate their compound inventories because we are the only company to have already proved that we can integrate a system for such large compound libraries. Other companies are in the process of doing it though."
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