Advancing automation in Compound Management: a novel industrial process underpinning drug discovery

[Display omitted] •Increasing assay demand and complexity will stretch the capacity and agility of current compound management processes.•Compound Management organisations will need to up-scale current infrastructure, outsource or create new paradigms to meet these requirements.•AstraZeneca have developed novel acoustically-compatible storage tubes and technologies with external partners.•Miniaturisation of compound storage tubes enables faster access to the corporate collection.•Fully-acoustic workflows minimise waste whilst maintaining quality and are applicable across the industry. Faced with ageing infrastructure and ever-increasing demands from hit discovery and lead optimisation functions, AstraZeneca has chosen to develop innovative technologies and process solutions to support the future of drug discovery. These include the miniaturisation of compound storage tubes for high-density storage and rapid access to the corporate collection for feeding samples to the predicted tripling number of high throughput screening (HTS) campaigns. The acoustically- compatible tubes also enable the first fully-acoustic plate production process for faster sample supply to screening with less waste and continued high quality. Operating at a smaller scale reduces compound synthesis, storage, and consumption, prompting miniaturisation of upstream chemistry and downstream biological assays, while offering a transformative and sustainable solution to many drug discovery issues applicable across the industry.