A mobile robotic process chemist

Abstract

Process chemistry creates scalable routes for new lead molecules and is a crucial but laborious stage in pharmaceutical and agrochemical development cycles. We have built an automated process chemistry platform that tackles late-stage process development. The modular workflow integrates both industry-standard tools and bespoke devices to enable process scale synthesis, work-up, and analysis. A multitasking mobile robot works between an automated synthesis reactor and an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (UHPLC-MS) for product analysis, cleaning the reactor between runs. The robot's anthropomorphic manipulation capabilities allow it to interface with minimally redesigned equipment that can be shared with human researchers. Reaction yields and purity match human chemist performance. Timings for round-the-clock, back-to-back experiments suggest that the weekly reaction output of the robot operating multiple reactors could exceed that of a human process chemist by a factor of 12 in an industrial setting.