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ABB Robotics and the University of Texas Medical Branch’s (UTMB) Life Sciences and Healthcare Lab have developed an automatic neutralizing antibody testing system. The robotic system can decide a person’s immunity to varied strains of COVID, and carry out different virus testing.
The system is ready to improve the variety of neutralizing antibody exams carried out from 15 a day to over 1,000 every day.
“The ability to carry out more daily tests is the key to generating more data on individual immunity profiles that will help control the further spread of the virus,” Dr. Michael Laposata, professor and chairman of the division of Pathology at UTMB, stated. “By transforming the rate at which testing can be carried out and eliminating the need for large numbers of laboratory staff being exposed to the potential risk of infection in manual testing, the automated system we’ve developed with ABB provides an accurate, fast, flexible and safe way of meeting our goals.”
Increasing the variety of every day exams will help UTMB researchers higher perceive how efficient COVID vaccines have been. COVID’s many mixed mutations have made it difficult for researchers to find out the best safety for every variant.
The system goals to detect a SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody with out cross-reaction with different infections. The ensuing knowledge can be utilized by the individual being examined researchers, and native policymakers to assist them make extra knowledgeable selections about tips on how to reduce the danger of additional spreading the virus.
“This project is a clear example of how robotics can increase speed and efficiency, while making work safer for the researchers involved,” Daniel Navarro, Managing Director of Consumer Segments and Service Robotics at ABB, stated. “Working closely with UTMB, we are combining our expertise [in] biology, lab process, automation and software to develop and deploy an automated robotic solution that significantly advances and informs our response to the COVID pandemic.”
ABB used its RobotStudio offline programming software program to mannequin, iterate and check completely different combos of lab gear and robotic positions to develop the system. The whole course of, from inception to operation, took simply 18 months.
“What we managed to achieve in this project within such a short space of time is extraordinary—many multimillion-dollar companies take several years to create solutions like the one we’ve developed in a fraction of the time,” Juan Garcia, director of Laboratory Services at UTMB, stated.
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