Efficient discovery of new medicine formulations using a semi-self-driven robotic formulator

Abstract

We present the discovery of new medicine formulations using a semi-self-driven robotic formulator. Solubilising drugs is a significant challenge in the pharmaceutical industry, with the majority of active molecules in development for therapies being poorly soluble. The discovery of high solubility drug formulations, is a highly complex challenge involving the mixing of drugs with excipients in thousands of potential combinations. We have developed a self-driving laboratory process for the production, assessment, and optimisation of solubility of liquid formulations suitable for injectable medicines, and apply it to the example molecule curcumin. Our system discovered 7 lead formulations with high solubility (>10 mg mL⁻¹) after sampling only 256 out of 7776 potential formulations (∼3%) in only a few days. Beyond presenting an efficient workflow for the optimisation and discovery of new liquid formulations, this work forms the basis for a more generalised optimisation workflow that could be applied to any formulation problem in the future, especially those where no prior information is known.