• Question: How big a part will robots play in the making and developing of new drugs?

    Asked by ExplosiveBiskit to Aaron, David, Elaine, Sarah, Zoe on 18 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by HannahP.
    • Photo: Zoe Roberts

      Zoe Roberts answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      When a drug has passed all the testing and a company decides it is going to market it to the public it goes into manufacture. Loads of machines (robots) are used to keep the temperature right on the vessel, stir the mixture and so on. The drug is then packaged on a conveyor belt where machines again control the packing process. This means that the process can happen day and night and you only need minimal work force to monitor the machines.

    • Photo: David Foley

      David Foley answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Even in the drug discovery phase robots and computers play a big role. We dispense all our compounds for testing using robots (there’s a picture on my profile), we use computational models to help us design drugs and our course we store all our data on computers. We also use machines to help with the synthesis and purification of reactions.

    • Photo: Sarah Ashwood

      Sarah Ashwood answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      The more technology advances the more useful robots are becoming in drug synthesis. Large scale a lot of processes are done by machines, however even in labs where you work on small quantities this is often done with the assistance of robots. If you want to do 20 reactions to check reaction conditions to make a specific molecule then you would programme a robot to weigh out specific chemicals for you so you don’t have too – this is great because if each reaction has 5 different chemicals in it and you need 20 chemicals it can take FOREVER to weigh it all out yourself by hand!!

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