Charles River Laboratories has announced a collaboration with software and assay developer Synthace to advance assay development in drug discovery. 

As part of the collaboration announced at SLAS2026, Charles River will give its clients access to Synthace’s approach to developing, automating and transferring more robust assays, which it says are faster and more efficient than using other methodologies. 

The collaboration follows a proof-of-concept project in which Charles River used Synthace’s software to effectively and rapidly develop a 1536-well assay and assay transfer, implementing a design of over 700 experimental conditions across multiple laboratories and equipment. 

“Synthace allows us to conduct more technically demanding experiments with greater scientific rigour,” said Dr Rob Howes, Senior Director of Small Molecule Discovery at Charles River.  

“With this, we know that the assays we’re developing are more robust, allowing a greater degree of certainty in the results we’re seeing, while also improving their reproducibility. In doing so, we’re dramatically reducing the amount of time we need to develop robust assays and ultimately speeding up this critical part of drug discovery.” 

Collaboration to support ‘next generation of experiments’

Reproducing experiments across different sites has been a significant challenge for biology research and development teams, with 72% of researchers acknowledging a reproducibility crisis.  

With the challenge estimated to cost $100 billion annually in preclinical research alone, the collaboration between Synthace and Charles River could improve reproducibility through a new approach to assay development. 

Assays provide a window into how molecules might become drugs, but their development often ends up as a time-consuming bottleneck. Biological complexity hampers assay development and transfer, creating costly delays, variable data and significant frustration for project teams. 

However, with Synthace’s technology integrated into Charles River’s lab automation, teams were able to implement high-throughput Design of Experiments (DoE) across multiple locations and a diverse user base. 

“Computational biology has taken a significant leap forward with AI, but in doing so, the lab risks being left behind,” said Markus Gershater, CEO and Co-Founder of Synthace.  

“Combining DoE, automation and software is the answer, as together they deliver a step-change in experimental power to unpick biological complexity. We call this High Dimensional Experimentation, and it will be the next generation of experiments for drug discovery.”