Biotech reseearchers often find that the technology needed to do what they want to do is not there. For example, testing thousands of substances on cells and measuring the results precisely is going to take a great deal of time if done manually. To be feasible and useful, automated methods are needed to carry out such tests.
Another issue is doing things within affordable costs. Creating artificial skin models is something that can be done at competitive costs if automation is used to do it.
The Biopolis testing laboratory opened at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany is focusing on this issue. Biologists and engineers work together at the laboratory.
Engineers know how to use machines to process small objects and use robots to handle tiny amounts of fluid. On the other hand, they learn that living organisms like bacteria and cells from the human body rarely behave as the engineers would like them to do.
There are also completely new issues in biotech engineering that engineers have probably never come across before. For example, the equipment must be permanently sterilized and the gearboxes of robots must be encapsulated to prevent wear debris from contaminating the cell cultures.
Read about the first project that the lab is handling and other news at Research in Germany
