Launch HN: Radix Labs (S18) – Downloading drugs with programmable lab automation
We think lab equipment is like mainframes were in the 1980’s - you have to program each one as a special snowflake. All that we've done is built an operating system so you can write a program once that runs on all of them. Just like developers write apps for android, they write recipes for Radix. In the future with our technology, you’ll be able to download a recipe for making a coca-cola and if you have the right robots and precursors in your lab, they’ll just start making it.
Technically, we do this by making biologists describe their protocol in a formal language with verified operational semantics. We do this with a web UI, so they don’t have to write “real” source code. We compile this protocol to our IR, deriving control and data flow graphs to inform our place-and-route algorithms. After the program is realized to robot/lab instrument commands, we generate code to be run on the automated machinery. If the entire protocol can’t be totally realized by automation, we generate natural language instructions for humans to interact with the runtime system.
We go through this process to gain features you’re used to in your “normal” operating system. We provide a virtual memory abstraction so that programs compose, concurrency primitives for executing tasks in parallel and synchronizing access to fluids, and drivers to support a wide variety of different lab hardware.
These abstractions differentiate us from companies like Transcriptic and Emerald Cloud Labs by allowing us to write programs with branching control flows, support for on-premise deployments, a wider variety of compatible hardware, and an advanced optimizing compiler to allow users to specify optimization criteria like minimum execution time, minimum consumable usage, or max flow to run a lab as a high-throughput assembly line.
Right now we’re compatible with some pipetting robots (Opentrons and some Tecan robots) and we're working on adding more devices. Contact us and let us know what you need automated. Launch HN: Radix Labs (YC S18) - Software for Bio Lab Automation
We’re doing this to bring better lab-scale tooling to biologists, it currently costs 2.3B to get a new drug to market. This is too high to the point of where promising drugs are scrapped for economic reasons, and we think we can help fix that.
We’ll be here to answer any questions you have about us and our product for the next few hours as @Ian_Paul and @Dhash. Also feel free to fill out this (http://radix.bio/contact-us.html) form and we’ll answer any question you have over email