Arctoris was featured in Fierce Biotech following the acquisition of Eli Lilly’s Life Sciences Studio, a highly automated robotic laboratory originally based in San Diego. The facility’s automation platform is being relocated to Arctoris’ headquarters in Oxford, significantly expanding the company’s experimental capacity.
The Life Sciences Studio was initially developed by Eli Lilly as part of a major investment in its San Diego research operations. Designed as a remotely controlled robotic laboratory, the platform allowed researchers to run experiments through cloud-based software that controlled automated laboratory equipment.
With the acquisition, Arctoris is integrating the automated infrastructure into its Ulysses® drug discovery platform, adding several new capabilities including additional automated biochemistry modules, high-throughput screening systems, and expanded cell biology experimentation capacity. The expansion also significantly increases compound storage capacity and overall experimental throughput.
According to Arctoris CEO Tom Fleming, the acquisition substantially increases the company’s ability to generate high-quality experimental data and enables more ambitious drug discovery programs for biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners.
By integrating the automated laboratory into its Oxford operations, Arctoris aims to accelerate drug discovery timelines and address challenges around reproducibility and data consistency that often arise in traditional manual laboratory workflows.
