Custom robotic workstation automates company’s broad portfolio of biology assays for academia, biotech, and pharma

Meets growing need for autonomous tools that boost throughput and reproducibility
Provides customers with verified and automated workflows

Merck, a leading science and technology company, and Opentrons Labworks, Inc., a leader in lab automation and accessible robotics, announced a multi-year agreement to automate assay kits on a custom Opentrons Flex® workstation.

Scientists and engineers will collaborate to develop and verify platform workflows utilizing Merck’s broad offering of automation-enabled assays. Together, the custom workstation and automation-enabled assays will deliver increased consistency and higher throughput by reducing manual processing and repetitive tasks with a user-friendly robotic system.

“Our customers are prioritizing tools and technologies that improve reproducibility and productivity, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks that take their science further, faster,” said Jean-Charles Wirth, Head of Science & Lab Solutions for the Life Science business of Merck. “Our partnership with Opentrons reinforces our focus to automate and digitalize the lab - supporting scientists at all stages with tools that can increase efficiency, safety, and success rates of delivering new potential therapeutics.”

Customers can place orders for workstations and assay kits from Merck starting mid-2025. Applications will include broad workflows across protein sample preparation, molecular, cell, and other biochemical and chemistry workflows launching throughout the length of the agreement.

“Part of our commitment to making lab automation as accessible as possible is finding partners who share a similar vision,” said Jonathan Brennan-Badal, CEO of Opentrons. “Merck Life Science is a proven leader in terms of the breadth and quality of products they offer for pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, and we’re excited to combine that with our ability to provide world-class automation, service and support.”

By combining the automation expertise and service excellence of Opentrons with the powerful R&D, supply chain, and quality systems of Merck we will deliver reliable products streamlining research from sample prep to analysis for immunodetection, protein research, enzyme technology, genome editing, omics research, pharmaceutical development, service and testing and cell culture.

This adds to Merck’s existing Biology innovations to increase Life Science lab productivity, like the Millicell® DCI Digital Cell Imager that allows for accelerated cell culture analysis with an intuitive interface while also adding to the company’s commitment to provide next-generation biology solutions such as their recent acquisition of HUB Organoids Holding B.V.
www.merckgroup.com

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