Aseptic robot withstands harsh sterilization

Citation

(2005), "Aseptic robot withstands harsh sterilization", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932aad.001

Aseptic robot withstands harsh sterilization

Aseptic robot withstands harsh sterilization

Keywords: Robots, Automation

Automation tooling systems (ATS) has announced a new, ultra-clean, aseptic robot.

The new robot technology – vaporous hydrogen peroxide (VHP)-compatible robotics (VHP Robot) – is believed to be the first automated robotic solution capable of withstanding the harsh sterilization treatment required by aseptic process environments.

“The pharmaceutical industry needs VHP compatible robotics and we've been working on developing this innovative automation technology over the past year”, said Klaus Woerner, ATS President and Chief Executive Officer.

The first application for our VHP robot is expected to be in automated batch sterility testing, a slow and laborious process that is nevertheless critical in releasing every drug production lot to market.

Woerner said ATS is also targeting other applications for VHP robotics such as cell culture and harvesting for liquid biologic production, production of certain clinical trials materials, in-line high volume check-weigh operations as well as potent and toxic compound handling.

Aseptic manufacturing is a large and rapidly growing area in pharmaceuticals, with growth being driven in part by the emergence of biotechnologically derived drugs, most of which must be aseptically produced.

For example, global vaccines sales alone are projected to grow 12 per cent compounded annually over the next 5 years from their current level of USD 9.8 billion.

The aseptic biotech drug market extends well beyond this level.

The need for automation in aseptic processes – critical aseptic processes must undergo frequent sterilization, usually with aggressive chemicals such as VHP or high temperature VHP and steam.

Many aseptic processes in isolated pharmaceutical production environments are entirely manual, requiring the use of glove ports.

Manual processes in such environments are notorious for their low productivity, difficult worker ergonomics, and degradation of the ultra-clean isolator environment through leaks in gloves or glove port seals.

VHP - compatible robotics will reduce costs and increase throughput by allowing many of these manufacturing processes to become fully automated.

“Because of the complexity involved in production, the pharmaceutical sector lags far behind other industries in terms of manufacturing productivity”, said Mr Woerner.

“Our objective is to change this by working with pharmaceutical customers to solve their specialized needs.

By doing this successfully, ATS aims to become a prime supplier not only of specialized aseptic automation but also the manufacturing solutions partner of choice for the industry's growing automation requirements.”

About VHP robotic technology – the ATS five-axis VHP-compatible SCARA robot at the heart of the batch sterility platform is expected to be unique because of it is class 0 level of cleanliness (US Fed 209E), and because of its drug industry standard stainless steel construction.

It is also characterized by a small footprint and by high speed and accuracy.

As the only provider of VHP- compatible robotics, ATS expects demand for the technology to be strong with numerous different pharmaceutical applications.

This batch sterility application is expected to become ATS's second standard automation platform targeting the Pharma industry – the first being its high speed, next generation machine vision inspection platform for pharmaceutical production – and others are planned.

The technology builds on ATS's exclusive relationship with Innovative Robotics Systems IRSI is a specialty robot developer and supplier primarily serving the semiconductor industry.