Multiply Labs is doing for cell remedy labs what has already occurred within the chip business: It’s introducing robots to do the tedious, precision and hygienic work higher, sooner and cheaper.
The startup idea was sparked when Fred Parietti was at MIT doing PhD analysis in robotics and he met with Alice Melocchi, who confirmed him how these laborious labs lacked automation whereas risking contamination.
“She confirmed me what she did in a lab and the way tough it was, and I couldn’t consider it — I believed medicine had been made like chips, and this was insane but additionally actual,” mentioned Parietti, co-founder and CEO of Multiply Labs. “Subsequent, I flew to Silicon Valley, and we began this at YCombinator.”
San Francisco-based Multiply Labs, based in 2016, at the moment is automating cell remedy manufacturing with robots for main corporations, together with Kyverna Therapeutics and Legend Biotech.
Multiply Labs provides end-to-end robotic techniques that produce gene modified cell therapies at scale.
Much like how the semiconductor business has advanced from clear rooms with technicians in bunny fits, A number of Labs is ushering on this new period for biosciences. Like with chips at the moment, it guarantees precision positive factors, diminished contamination and superior manufacturing with bodily AI.
Multiply Labs techniques are bringing these therapeutics into the long run utilizing NVIDIA Omniverse libraries for creating digital twins of those lab environments and the NVIDIA Isaac Sim robotics simulation framework for coaching robots on the bespoke abilities required to develop these therapies. It’s additionally creating humanoid robots utilizing the NVIDIA Isaac GR00T humanoid basis robotic mannequin for aiding within the labs with improved hygiene.
Cell therapies are new and contain taking cells from a affected person or donor and modifying them for treating sufferers to combat ailments or a affected person’s personal immune response. They present promise for treating cancers, genetic problems, autoimmune ailments and neurological situations.
These artisanal therapies — one-offs for particular sufferers — are costly to supply and might simply be destroyed within the course of by contamination or improper dealing with. Robots inside the managed biomanufacturing clusters of Multiply Labs assist guarantee extra hygienic and precision processes.
“It must be sterile, and also you don’t need anybody respiration anyplace close to the cells, so it was an apparent excessive worth utility of robotics,” mentioned Parietti.
Simulating Cell Remedy Manufacturing Expertise for Improved Precision in Labs
Cell remedy manufacturing is complicated, expensive, and susceptible to failure. Bioscience corporations are turning to automation and simulation to scale back danger, scale output and protect knowledgeable information. A key growth is imitation studying — coaching robots in Isaac Sim to copy knowledgeable duties by analyzing video demonstrations. This strategy captures the tacit, usually undocumented abilities of high scientists and interprets them into robotic management insurance policies.