iiCON at the heart of infectious disease research This year, a new AI robotic laboratory designed to accelerate the discovery of drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases was announced in Liverpool UK. The £20 million ($26.4 million) Liverpool Accelerate Laboratory was developed through the Infection Innovation Consortium: iiCON – an initiative dedicated… Read More
The UK’s first high-security robotic AI laboratory designed to accelerate the discovery of drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases has opened in Liverpool. The £20 million Liverpool Accelerate Laboratory has been developed through the Infection Innovation Consortium: iiCON, which advances pioneering infection R&D through collaboration between industry, researchers and the NHS. It… Read More
Dr Tim Meyer, Research Group Leader Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at University Medical Center Göttingen, explains why the next generation of scientists must be trained differently for the lab. Academic life science research has traditionally been optimised for novelty. Students and early-career researchers are trained to design elegant proof-of-concept experiments, execute them… Read More
SLAS has revealed the winners of its New Product Awards, drawing the Vienna conference to a close. Among the winners are Bionomous for its Sortivo technology, a next-generation large-particle sorter, Cube Biotech with its PlateX MP Strep-TactinXT MagBeads product, which enables automated membrane protein purification from lysate to analytical-grade samples, and nNano AG for the CERTUS RIVO, a dispensing… Read More
The world of drug discovery definitely kept us on our toes last year. Uncertainty in the market, not helped by the challenges created by changes in US drug pricing and tariffs, led to spending dips and nervousness throughout the sector. SLAS2026 is a key point in the… Read More
Dr Marc Porr, Founder and CEO of TechkIT, examines the cyber-security risks that have reached the automated lab. About a year ago Mark Auty from Unilever wrote about new cyber security challenges arising… Read More
This advertorial is sponsored by Revvity. In the modern life science landscape, the journey from a biological hypothesis to a therapeutic breakthrough is rarely a straight line. It is a path frequently obstructed by the physical realities of the bench: the stubborn viscosity of a specific… Read More
DDW covers some of the biggest announcements from the second day of SLAS2026. Emulate showcases organ-chip platform at SLAS2026 Emulate has brought its AVA Emulation System to SLAS2026, showcasing the potential to accelerate drug development with a first-of-its-kind high-throughput organ-chip platform. Read more… Charles River and… Read More
UniteLabs has presented its Operating System at SLAS2026, promising to unlock AI-ready lab automation. The Operating System replaces vendor-specific instruments and software with an open, Python-based infrastructure, giving lab automation engineers and scientists full control and transparency over their workflows. Use cases at launch included liquid handling and closed loop… Read More
The lab automation market in the drug discovery sector is estimated to grow from $5.90 billion in 2026 to reach $7.27 billion by 2031. This is according to Mordor Intelliogence. It adds that the growth reflects the “steady integration of artificial intelligence into laboratory workflows, the mainstream adoption… Read More
This ebook, sponsored by NuAire, explores the latest lab automation technologies and the ways they can create wide-reaching improvements to drug development projects.
A series of DDW seminars based on the SLAS2026 theme of Catalyze Discovery will be available to visitors of the SLAS2026 International Conference and Exhibition (7-11 February 2026, Boston, USA). The DDW ‘Creating cures: The role of lab automation in successful drug discovery’ programme will highlight… Read More
The SLAS Europe 2025 Conference and Exhibition will take place in Hamburg, Germany, 20-22 May. Here we take a look at the programme and new features. This year’s SLAS Europe programming is centred on three educational tracks: Advances in Drug Discovery, Advances in Laboratory Automation, and Screening… Read More
Diana Spencer breaks down the areas of drug discovery where automation is enhancing accuracy and efficiency, ultimately bringing therapies to patients faster. Credence Research predicts that the lab automation in drug discovery market will grow by 5% from $6.1 million in 2023, to $9.5 million in 2032, driven by the… Read More
Insilico Medicine has deployed the first bipedal humanoid in its AI-powered fully-robotic drug discovery laboratory. The humanoid, called ‘Supervisor’, will be used for data acquisition and data generation for training of the embodied AI systems to learn the skills of human laboratory scientists. The work… Read More
More than half of labs are planning to invest in new lab automation equipment in the next two years, reflecting the importance of keeping up with constantly evolving technologies. This is one of the key findings of the DDW Research & Consultancy 2025 Research Report… Read More
