Company:Opentrons

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Short description: Bioscience liquid handler manufacturer
Opentrons Labworks Inc.
TypePrivate
Industry
Founded2014; 10 years ago (2014)
Founder
  • Nicholas Wagner
  • Will Canine
Headquarters
Long Island City, New York
,
United States
Key people
Jon Brennan-Badal (CEO)
Products
  • OT-1
  • OT-2
  • Flex
Websiteopentrons.com
male presenting individual with a white mask over their mouth and nose looking at the insides of the liquid handling robot
Commissioning of an Opentrons robot in the Regional Hospital of Málaga (2020)

Opentrons Labwords Inc. (or Opentrons) is a biotechnology company that manufactures liquid handling robots driven by open source software. Their robots can be used by scientists to manipulate small volumes of liquids for the purpose of undertaking biochemical or chemical reactions. The instrument is used primarily by researchers and scientists interested in DIY biology, but is increasingly being used by other biologists.[1]

Products

  • OT-1 – The OpenTrons OT-1 was the result of a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform and was released in 2015 for $2,000.[2][3] This robot employed adapters to actuate handheld micropipettes. The release of the OT-1 marked the first commercial open source liquid handling robot in the life science industry. It was also the last in the series to adhere to open hardware standards,[4][5] however, editable CAD files were not released. It is no longer commercially available,[6] though at least one replication was attempted.[7]
  • OT-2 – The OpenTrons OT-2 was released in 2018 and has seen utilization as one of the tools that researchers are leveraging in the fight against COVID-19.[8][9][10] The OT-2 and later products, including its electronic micropipettes and hardware modules, are closed source (propietary) hardware. Only coarse CAD files for the enclosure have been released,[11] with no details on the internals, such that it no longer complies with current open hardware standards.[4][5] The software remains open source.
  • Flex – Successor to the OT-2, the Flex was released in 2023, "measures two feet by two feet by two feet", and is purchased with a one-time cost rather than a robot as a service (RaaS) subscription.[12] Its open-source and accessible API allows it to interact with potential AI tools.[13]
A person using Opentrons liquid handling robot inside one of the OpenCell laboratories.

Subsidiaries

As a company, Opentrons has a number of subsidiaries.[14]

  • Opentrons Robotics – business unit for user-friendly lab automation
  • Pandemic Response Lab (PRL) – provides diagnostic lab services to health systems across the US
  • Neochromosome (Neo) – acquired in March 2021, Neo creates genome-scale cell engineering solutions for therapeutics
  • Zenith AI – acquired in June 2021,[15] Zenith AI brings no-code AI and modern machine learning to the platform

See also

  • Laboratory automation
  • Liquid handling robot
  • List of biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the New York metropolitan area

References

  1. May, Mike (2019-05-20). "A DIY approach to automating your lab" (in en). Nature 569 (7757): 587–588. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-01590-z. PMID 31110319. Bibcode2019Natur.569..587M. 
  2. "This Robot Could Make Creating New Life Forms As Easy As Coding An App". Wired. 2014-11-20. https://www.wired.com/2014/11/opentrons-bio-robots/. Retrieved 2020-10-10. 
  3. "DIYBio Comes of Age". Wired. 2014-11-07. https://www.wired.com/2014/11/diybio-comes-of-age/. Retrieved 2020-10-10. 
  4. 4.0 4.1 "Open Source Hardware Definition (OSHWA)" (in en-US). 2012-05-26. https://www.oshwa.org/definition/. 
  5. 5.0 5.1 "DIN SPEC 3105 OSH - Open Source Hardware - Open Source". https://din.one/display/OSH/DIN+SPEC+3105+OSH. 
  6. "Sunsetting the OT-One". https://support.opentrons.com/s/article/Sunsetting-the-OT-One. 
  7. Jockey, Pipette (2018-01-03). "Making a Opentrons compatible liquid handling robot" (in en-US). https://pipettejockey.com/2018/01/03/making-a-opentrons-compatible-liquid-handling-robot/. 
  8. Walker, Kenneth T.; Donora, Matthew; Thomas, Anthony; Phillips, Alexander James; Ramgoolam, Krishma; Pilch, Kjara S; Oberacker, Phil; Jurkowski, Tomasz Piotr et al. (2020). "CONTAIN:An open-source shipping container laboratory optimised for automated COVID-19 diagnostics". Pre-print. doi:10.1101/2020.05.20.106625. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2020/05/20/2020.05.20.106625.full.pdf. 
  9. Villanueva-Cañas, José Luis; Gonzalez-Roca, Eva; Unanue, Aitor Gastaminza; Titos, Esther; Martínez Yoldi, Miguel Julián; Vergara Gómez, Andrea; Puig Butillé, Joan Antón (2020). "ROBOCOV: An affordable open-source robotic platform for SARS-CoV-2 testing by RT-qPCR". Pre-print. doi:10.1101/2020.06.11.140285. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2020/06/13/2020.06.11.140285.full.pdf. 
  10. Maia Chagas, Andre; Molloy, Jennifer C.; Prieto-Godino, Lucia L.; Baden, Tom (2020). "Leveraging open hardware to alleviate the burden of COVID-19 on global health systems". PLOS Biology 18 (4): e3000730. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000730. ISSN 1545-7885. PMID 32330124. 
  11. "Opentrons OT-2 Reference Model" (in en). https://github.com/Opentrons/ot2/tree/master/reference-model. 
  12. Heater, Brian (2023-05-22). "Opentrons aims to democratize lab access with its Flex robot" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/22/opentrons-aims-to-democratize-lab-access-with-its-flex-robot/. 
  13. "Opentrons Flex™ Lab Robot Launches to Accelerate Bioautomation Across Thousands of Life Science Experiments" (in en). 2023-05-22. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230522/Opentrons-Flexe284a2-Lab-Robot-Launches-to-Accelerate-Bioautomation-Across-Thousands-of-Life-Science-Experiments.aspx. 
  14. "Opentrons Announces $200 Million Series C Round Led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2" (in en). 2021-09-23. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005225/en/Opentrons-Announces-200-Million-Series-C-Round-Led-by-SoftBank-Vision-Fund-2. 
  15. Zenith. "UK Applied AI Powerhouse, Zenith AI emerges from stealth mode and is acquired by Opentrons Labworks" (in en). https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/uk-applied-ai-powerhouse-zenith-ai-emerges-from-stealth-mode-and-is-acquired-by-opentrons-labworks-841748962.html.