Transcriptic Launches Molecular, Cell Biology On-Demand Lab

By Bio-IT World Staff 

 

July 15, 2014 | Transcriptic today launched the Transcriptic Platform, their own cloud-based programmable system for defining and executing experimental protocols. The company says the platform can create a 10-fold productivity advantage for researchers working on molecular and cell biology.

 

The Transcriptic Platform allows users to maintain full experimental control with machine-readable protocol contracts, while remotely executing the protocols using Transcriptic’s on-demand automated lab infrastructure. 

 

Transcriptic’s launch comes just days after the launch of the Emerald Cloud Laboratory earlier this month. Both platforms feature a cloud-based interface and on-demand lab equipment. 

 

“By its very nature, life science research is a slow, expensive and labor-intensive endeavor. Transcriptic’s mission is to provide the infrastructure necessary to lower costs, improve reproducibility, and allow researchers to do the projects that right now they can only wish they could run,” said Max Hodak, Transcriptic’s CEO, in a press release. “Scientists no longer have to purchase expensive equipment or be chained to the bench to run their experiments. Transcriptic frees up researchers to focus on the creative aspects of scientific discovery that drive important medical advances and make critical discoveries possible.” 

 

Transcriptic also offers customers collaboration with a team of highly qualified Ph.D. scientists and engineers who provide valuable support at every step of the process. Researchers can run many projects in parallel and can remotely monitor progress and view quality control data via Transcriptic’s online interface. 

 

Transcriptic also announced its Research Partnership Program, which allows customers with projects that produce a high volume of output to have the option of performing a low-cost test run to ensure reliable results, and then receive a deep discount on scaling up their validated protocol. 

 

Transcriptic boasts academic users from several institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Cal Tech, and UC Davis. 

 

The UC Davis Genome Center has used Transcriptic to outsource the creation and processing of samples for projects ranging from bio fuels to cancer therapies to specialty chemicals. “The building phase is a critical component to research, but can be extremely mundane, repetitive, and mindless,” said Justin Siegel, assistant professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Molecular Medicine at the UC Davis Genome Center, in a press release. “Using Transcriptic has fundamentally changed the way we approach research, because we can rely on them to do that leg work, freeing up our students to spend more time on the creative aspects of research like design and building. These new APIs have simplified the process even more, which will ultimately help us produce even more efficient and reliable output.”

 

Transcriptic company has received $6 million in total funding and lists IA Ventures, Google Ventures, Data Collective, AME Cloud Ventures, Founders Fund, Naval Ravikant, Mark Cuban, and others as investors.