A few weeks ago, we introduced Monomer Bio, announcing our intent to build the operating system for biology research. We started Monomer to free scientists from rote, mundane tasks, so that they can focus on discovery.
Monomer fuses instrument orchestration with scientifically-aware workflow management to provide the first integrated automation platform purpose-built for cell engineering and cell culture. This platform powers Monomer's flagship automation solutions and enables scientists to drastically scale the throughput and complexity of their in-house experiments.
Today, we'll take a closer look at the Monomer automation platform. Specifically, we’ll go over how Monomer:
Seamlessly handles lab automation
Organizes and analyzes experimental data
Delivers value for scientists and research leaders
Creates a future-ready laboratory
Monomer Handles Your Hardware
Monomer's automation platform empowers scientists to rapidly iterate on and optimize automation protocols using an intuitive interface, while abstracting away confusing and irrelevant details. You can stay focused on your work and the details that matter.
The Monomer platform handles every aspect required to operate robotic workcells with minimal intervention. Our platform:
Seamlessly integrates and runs devices like liquid handlers, robotic arms, and imagers
Schedules automated operations with well-level control
Orchestrates multi-day, plate-based workflows
Manages reagents and tracks consumable requirements and consumption
Allows for remote monitoring and intervention
Monomer's automation plaform enables our team to install and integrate 3rd party scientific instruments on your behalf and rapidly onboard your unique scientific workflows. We take care of the finicky stuff: robotic arm coordinate systems, liquid handling tuning, sample and consumable tracking, and so on. But we leave you in control of the knobs and levers that matter to you: media type and volume, feeding schedules, imaging methods, seeding densities and more.
Today, the Monomer platform automates cell culture processes for stem, primary, and immortalized cell lines, supporting both routine maintenance and complex protocols like directed differentiation, co-culturing, and cell-based assays.
Automate routine tasks like media exchange, passaging, and sampling, or program detailed protocols for your multi-day, multi-parameter workflows. Leverage advanced scheduling and consumable management features and let your workcell run unattended for days on end, and rest confident with the knowledge that your cell lines are being tended to with the same level of care you would provide.
Automation can expand the possibilities available to biology researchers, but it’s long been the domain of the largest, best-funded labs. With Monomer, teams of any size can build robotic workcells and harness the power of automation.
Let Monomer run your hardware and handle your headaches, while you focus on your research.
Monomer Organizes Your Data
Monomer collects and curates experimental data and organizes that data into contextualized and well-annotated datasets. No more trying to merge exports from different instruments, no more getting lost in data cleaning before you can even get to analysis.
Let the Monomer platform keep track of your data. Then, use built-in analytics or extract structured data sets to conduct your own in-depth analyses. Connect artificial intelligence pipelines and embrace the possibilities provided by deep learning.
With support for a variety of instruments and data modalities, Monomer collects and structures readout data across all of your cell biology workflows. Anomalies are identified and results are presented to scientists in intuitive interfaces for real-time decision making. The Monomer automation platform:
Ingests, organizes, and displays microscopy, plate-reader, and flow cytometry data
Summarizes key growth metrics like growth rate and doubling time
Tracks sample lineage and parent-child relationships
Records experiment metadata across categories you define, such as reagent lots, media composition, genotypes
Notifies users of anomalous results and needed interventions based on readout data
Using this data, scientists can easily derive meaningful insights and troubleshoot process issues, transforming their research practice from one reliant on guesswork to one driven by data.
We’ve helped customers design and implement machine learning analyses to identify issues like contamination or unwanted differentiation in near real-time, to identify cell lines in need of passaging, and to analyze cell morphology. Over time, Monomer's AI capabilities will automate routine decisions, predict optimal conditions, and operate on cultures autonomously.
Through data management and analysis, our platform acts as a lens through which you can better visualize and analyze your experiments. Monomer helps you find what you’re looking for, and discover what you otherwise might have missed.
Monomer Empowers Scientists to Focus on What Matters
Empowering scientists will always be our north star. For them, Monomer means more time thinking creatively about experimental design rather than tending cells by hand. It means replacing error-prone manual work with standardized robotic protocols. It means decisions guided by data rather than circumstance.
Monomer lets scientists conduct their research while spending less time in the lab. But it also allows them to conduct more research with higher quality information. Scientists can cost-effectively scale experiments in parallel rather than be limited by manual bandwidth. Phenomena can be systematically explored rather than cherry picked. And experiments too complex for manual management can now be explored by anyone – so long as they have access to Monomer.
Set up automated alerts to find out when a cell culture has reached a confluence threshold, or an anomaly has been detected. Use AI to surface the most promising cell lines from an array of hundreds of automatically maintained lines. Let go of whatever limits you thought there were on the scale and complexity of your experiments.
For research teams and biotech leaders, Monomer means more hands on deck focused on innovation rather than consumed by monotonous work. Teams can pursue more scientific threads in parallel and leverage better data to know which threads to focus on, paving the way for new discoveries and novel therapeutics.
Monomer enables scientists to do research on their own terms, while giving research teams the power to do more science with better information.
Monomer Prepares Your Lab for the Future
Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and biotech have only just begun, and Monomer is ready to help your lab not just keep pace, but take advantage.
Already, the Monomer platform optimizes tedious workflows and gathers detailed data. Our team consults on and supports the design of automated workcells, lending our expertise in automation and laboratory research. And, we take your lab the final mile, installing your hardware, integrating it with Monomer’s platform, and setting up machine learning applications.
Looking forward, the Monomer platform will become an active partner in experimental design. Labs will continuously tune culture conditions guided by Monomer’s analytics.
We envision artificial intelligence trained on vast collective data automatically operating experiments at the cutting edge of biology research. Non-intuitive phenomena discovered in silico can be quickly validated at scale. Entirely novel solutions can be deliberately designed, refined, and implemented rather than waiting to be serendipitously stumbled upon.
Monomer provides the first stepping stone toward this future by applying modern software and automation capabilities to wet lab research. We could not be more excited to help data, analytics, and automation transform cell engineering from isolated artistry into a collective engineering discipline.
Take your first step toward modernizing your lab. Schedule a product demo to automate your cell-based workflows. Start building with Monomer today, to be ready for tomorrow.