Robot speeds up cancer research effort

A robot like an oversized inkjet printer is dramatically speeding up the Australian search for new cancer-fighting drugs for children.

Switched on for its first project this week, the unique machine injects not ink onto paper but cancer cells and the molecules hoped to combat them into tiny plastic vials.

It had replaced the need for hours of meticulous lab work, said Associate Professor Richard Lock, and allows a major fast-tracking of the search.

"We've got a machine that can do in a week what it would take a researcher months to do," said Dr Lock, head of the Leukaemia Biology Program at the University of NSW-based Children's Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA).

"... we're actually starting our first screen this week - it is very exciting times."

The drug-screening robot is the only one of its kind in Australia devoted solely to childhood cancer research, and it has been brought fully online for the first time this week.

Its first project involves sifting through tens of thousands of potential drug candidates looking for a new treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).

The machine has an automated process which injects living cells from the cancer into a vial, along with one active compound from the research facility's vast library of potential drug candidates.

After an incubation phase, scientists then look for any evidence of the compound killing off the cells and so hinting at a possible new anti-cancer drug.

The robot can do this in batches of several hundred compounds - any one of which could provide the breakthrough - at a time and this is a major advance on doing this by hand.

"We've got chemical libraries that total 160,000 molecules ... so if you think of the logistics of trying to screen 160,000 potential drugs, it would take months and months and months," Dr Lock said. "Imagine a researcher having to do that manually."

In another example of the boon it has delivered to researchers, one of the CCIA's earlier and promising drug candidates was the result of five years of searching.

Had the robot technology been available it could have been uncovered within days.

Dr Lock also warned that despite the robot being able to speed up the initial work it would still take up to a decade to have any new drug proven safe and effective, and available for the public.

"This accelerates things so we can generate the leads but once you've got those there it's still a lot more work before you can get close to the clinic," he said.

The CCIA is based at the Lowy Cancer Research Centre, at the University of NSW.

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