New £20m robot lab to speed up disease research

Researchers in Liverpool say a new robotic laboratory could help speed up vaccine development and reduce the need for animal testing.

The £20m facility at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine will use lab-grown miniature human organs to test treatments for infectious diseases.

The facility, which has been supported by the Infection Innovation Consortium (iiCON), is due to be fully open by 2027.

Pro-vice chancellor for research and innovation, Prof Giancarlo Biagini, said: "It is really exciting to be involved and it's going to accelerate the way we develop drugs, vaccines and diagnostics."

Biagini said that the use of mini organs, such as the heart and brain, is "amazing technology", adding: "You can actually see the heart beating".

He said using tissue created from human donors, rather than animals, could improve research and provide more reliable data.

The school's former boss and founding member of iiCON, Professor Janet Hemingway, said the project will "create several hundred cutting-edge technology jobs".

She added: "Although the robots will do a lot of the work, we are training humans to develop that technology.

"Clinicians and researchers will be able to spend more of their time thinking how they do the science better rather than routine work."

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