Strateos Makes Cloud Lab Software Available to In-House Labs
By Bio-IT World Staff
July 13, 2021 | Strateos has launched its SmartLab Software which enables research organizations of any size to manage scientific workflows in-house while integrating automation with a modular, cloud-based software platform.
Strateos has two remote access laboratories—SmartLabs—in in Menlo Park and San Diego, California. The company provides cloud access to these facilities giving customers access to more than 14,000 square feet of laboratory space, 25 automation modules and 200-plus state-of-the-art research instruments tailored to the application needs of small-molecule and biologics drug discovery, cell and gene therapies and synthetic biology.
The new software platform integrates these remote SmartLabs with customers’ own lab environments, giving them access to the same software platform that Strateos uses in the SmartLabs to ensure variable control and reproducibility.
“We use our own software to command and control our SmartLab Studios and have now made it available externally,” Alok Gupta, Senior Vice President of Engineering, at Strateos, told Bio-IT World in an email. “Through this new offering, we are helping our clients optimize investments already made in their private labs to improve their internal operations and laboratory facilities to command and control drug discovery, cell and gene therapy, and synthetic biology workflows through a single interface. And, at the same time, giving them the option to remotely access an on-demand automated robotic cloud lab via a web browser so that they can pursue experiments using technologies and/or a scale unavailable to them locally.”
Strateos will roll out the platform in modules, the company says. The first available module, the SmartLab Software Collaborate Product, will focus on operational challenges in core labs, letting researchers monitor experiment requests, calendaring, scheduling, data parsing and ensuring resource management and team collaboration, Gupta explained. These capabilities will be valuable even in labs with no automation in-house, the company believes.
“The ability to see and control all incoming experiment requests and to collaborate with different roles in your lab allows the creation of an ecosystem around different work streams or programs within your lab,” Gupta said.
Two forthcoming modules will expand the capabilities of the SmartLab Software and enable full automation and control of scientific instruments through productized integrations, he added.
Hybrid Lab Environment
For those using the software both in-house and to facilitate SmartLabs research, they will be able to toggle easily between on-site facility control and Strateos’ remote-controlled SmartLabs. This is vision of a hybrid lab approach that Strateos sees as the future of life sciences research.
“Given our pricing models and the flexibility of our platform, a hybrid approach is really accessible to any lab,” Gupta said. Use cases will vary by user. “They may only need to tap into the cloud lab for very specific experiments and that can be very valuable in that it can now be part of a single dashboard. Other [users] may perform the majority of their experiments in the cloud and only do very specialized tasks "at home," he predicted.
