Compound production is an important process in the drug discovery and drug development industry. To that end, combinatorial chemistry is one technique employed to produce thousands of different compounds in batch processes. Compound production approaches frequently utilize any of a number of different devices, systems, components and/or instruments for sample processing that typically necessitate the placement of samples in particular locations within varying, multiple footprint environments. Ordinarily, sample re-formatting must be performed in order to address this issue, a process that constitutes a significant bottleneck in the drug discovery and drug development industry. Thus, the efficient back and forth movement, and/or placement of samples, from one or more footprints to other, different footprints, would effectively streamline an otherwise time consuming and expensive process. This is particularly true when process unification for compound production is a primary objective.
In some cases, it is very important to efficiently sort and/or group compounds when both quantitative and/or qualitative data is the basis for desired downstream operations. Yet, although thousands of compounds can be produced, the compounds, which can differ in a number of ways, often must be equal in molar concentration to be useful in quantitative high-throughput screening experiments and other applications. Unfortunately, the process required to achieve equal molar concentrations for different compounds, and/or the process of sorting and/or grouping compounds qualitatively, represents yet another bottleneck in the drug discovery and development industry. This is due to the fact that existing methods and systems are laborious, inefficient and time consuming, particularly since they generally operate serially, rather than in parallel.
Currently, a number steps must be performed in order to achieve equal molar concentration for a batch of compounds, because the sample mass of individual compounds can vary considerably from one processed sample to another. Such steps can include determining a mass of each compound of interest, calculating a volume of solution to be added to each compound in order to produce a desired molar concentration, and adding the calculated volume to each compound of interest. Unfortunately, a number of these steps, are generally performed manually, a fact that is problematic for a number of reasons.
One problem is related to the fact that thousands of compounds may be under consideration at any given time. Therefore, scientists can be required to expend valuable time weighing compounds and sorting the compounds/material based on the mass of each compound. Furthermore, human error is always a possibility, and, therefore, a concern with manual methods. Thus, existing manual methods are generally labor intensive, slow and prone to error.
Another conventional approach utilized to achieve equal molar concentration for large numbers/batches of compounds involves placing the material/compounds of interest into wells of a standard configuration 96 well microtiter plate. Depending upon the mass and molecular weight of material/compound in each individual well, each individual well is suspended with a different amount of solvent to achieve samples of equal molar concentration. This process is also very time consuming.
Alternatively, the overall weight of individual microtiter plates is used to estimate the amount of a particular material/compound per well and a uniform volume of solvent can be added to every well. Unfortunately, this method is inaccurate, and therefore problematic, because the resulting differences in the amount (moles) of each material/compound used in a particular screen generally generates non-quantitative data.
Existing systems have utilized automation to reduce the time associated with sorting material, however, considerable problems persist. For example, Bohdan Automation manufactures machines that load and unload tubes from tube blocks into a weighing machine. However, this technology suffers from a number of shortcomings, including, for example, that the technology is very slow, inflexible, essentially limited to 4 plate and 12 plate set-ups, provides a read only system, and does not have the capability to sort back and forth between multiple formats, in multiple footprint environments, and/or re-array, based on mass.
Existing automated systems are oftentimes limited by the availability of particular plate formats, and therefore, they are generally inflexible in terms of their ability to handle various designs and types of material, samples/sample containers. Existing methods and systems are also slow and generally unable to flexibly and simultaneously move material/multiple containers to different locations. For example, when existing systems and devices move material/containers, they can be limited to simple two-dimensional, vertical and/or horizontal movement and therefore cannot be placed in a unifying compound production process. Further, they are unable to adaptively sort material, samples/sample containers with multiple footprint capability; that is, from one or more first footprint(s) to one or more second, different footprints, and optionally, from the second, different footprint(s), back to the original first footprint. Also, existing systems typically cannot flexibly rotate material, samples/sample containers as part of the movement within the transferring process. Additionally, existing systems are oftentimes unable to successfully move material from one location to another specified location while simultaneously tracking the final location of the material. Further, existing systems suffer from the limitations of providing read-only capability. Read-only systems are ineffective if a predetermined track or endpoint for material/containers is not known.
From the foregoing discussion, it is apparent that there is a substantial need for methods, systems and apparatus that will offer a tenable solution to the existing need to efficiently sort large numbers/batches of material/compounds. It is also apparent that such a method, system and apparatus should efficiently sort materials/compounds such that those having the same amount (number of moles), or other properties of interest, are grouped into a batch or unit. In doing so, batches or units of grouped material can be efficiently addressed with a relatively uniform amount of solvent. Further, sorted/grouped material can be efficiently processed with high-throughput technology. Such a method, system and apparatus would provide a tremendous time savings and produce reliable concentrations of a multitude of various material/compounds.