Bristol-Myers Squibb Opens Research Facility
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS; Princeton, NJ) has officially opened a major expansion to its Pharmaceutical Research Institute facility. The four-story, 120,000-sq. ft. addition, named "F-Wing," is specially designed to house the world's largest high-speed robotic compound storage and retrieval system. Also included in the new addition are ultra-high throughput screening capabilities and state-of-the-art drug discovery laboratories to support the company's plans to accelerate drug discovery productivity.
At the plant opening ceremony Charles Heimbold, chairman and chief executive officer at BMS, stated, "Our Wallingford site has made significant contributions toward breakthrough treatments, especially for cancer and infectious diseases such as AIDS. We look forward to many new discoveries that have their genesis here."
The expansion was custom-built to house BMS's Haystack system, the world's largest, centralized, automated research compound management system. Haystack stores both dry and liquid compound samples in a variety of formats for storage and testing. Haystack currently has capacity for one million vials of dry compounds, five million microtubes of liquid samples and 160,000 microtiter plates, each containing up to 96 wells of solution. The system is built in integrated modules that allow for future growth.
The proprietary compound collection will be centralized within Haystack, allowing automated retrieval, tracking, and preparation of compounds for testing on demand. The entire system will allow the company to manage efficiently the increasing number of compounds entering the collection as a result of the company's aggressive drug discovery efforts and new technologies such as combinatorial chemistry. Bristol-Myers Squibb expects its compound collection to quadruple by the year 2000.
"Behind these walls are some of the pharmaceutical industry's most extraordinary machines of discovery," said Peter S. Ringrose, president of the BMS Pharmaceutical Research Institute. "Now, with the opening of this new wing, these machines will be used to bring forth the medicines of the next millennium. This technology gives our scientists the ability to find the 'needle in the haystack,' or the compounds that can be developed into best-in-class treatments for millions of patients worldwide."
The Automation Partnership of Cambridge, England built the Haystack system in partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb scientists. Emax Solution Partners developed the computer software to allow integration with the company's information technology infrastructure. Other companies that have used Haystack include GlaxoWellcome, SmithKline Beecham, Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and DuPont Agriculture Products.
By allowing the rapid preparation of compounds for automated screening, Haystack also supports the BMS investment in ultra-high throughput screening technology. The ultra-high throughput screening robotics from Aurora Biosciences also will be housed at the new facility. Together, the Haystack and Aurora systems will allow BMS to screen more than 100,000 compounds per day, the same number of compounds screened in one month just two years ago.
BMS also designed unique laboratories for chemistry and biology staff as part of the new wing addition. Two "megalabs" were constructed in an open configuration to encourage interaction among lab researchers and flexibility in configuring robotics technology shared by several teams.
F-wing was designed by Bristol-Myers Squibb facilities and engineering staff, working with Tecton Architects (Hartford, CT) and Kling Lindquist Architectural and Engineering (Philadelphia, PA).
For more information: William Dunnett, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Telephone: 609-818- 3016.