Q&A with Mohammad Akhlaq, Head of Automation at LabGenius
We caught up with Mohammed Akhlaq to learn more about how he’s been getting on in his role as a Head of Automation and to hear about where he thinks machine learning will have the biggest impact on the way we approach the discovery of novel therapeutics.
At the end of 2022 we welcomed Mohammed to lead our team of automation scientists. Mohammad joins us from Charles River, where he specialised in the development and automation of complex assays for universities through to large pharmaceutical organisations. Prior to this, he spent 23 years at Novartis cultivating his expertise in a range of high-throughput screening methods.
Let’s start with an easy one, can you tell us a bit more about your career to date and what first attracted you to the role at LabGenius?
I started my career with Ciba Geigy in 1991, which merged with Sandoz in 1996 to become Novartis. For the first 5 years I was part of the Exploratory Liposome Technologies group, which gave me an excellent foundation to develop my scientific and analytical skills. The role provided me with the opportunity not only to learn and develop as a scientist, but also the freedom to experiment, develop ideas and most importantly to think outside of the box and not be afraid to try new things for fear of failing.
I worked at Novartis for a total of 23 years, continuing to develop expertise in assay development and high-throughput screening (HTS) using a wide array of detection technologies and state-of-the-art laboratory automation.
After Novartis ceased to operate as a research facility within the UK in 2014, I moved to Charles River Laboratories. Over an 8 year period in a more project management and client facing role, I continued to develop and run HTS assays for a wide range of clients from universities and small startups through to large pharmaceutical companies.
In late 2022 the opportunity arose to join LabGenius; a vibrant, dynamic company with a great ethos where I feel I can make a significant contribution to the company’s mission of developing uniquely powerful antibody therapeutics using machine learning. At LabGenius, my main focus is applying my deep expertise and experience in automation and assay development to increase our experimental throughput and data quality. In turn, this enables machine learning to deliver faster DNA design to protein cycles to accelerate the discovery of better, more potent and safer immunotherapies.
How did you find the first few months in the role, and what has been your main focus?
My first few months at LabGenius were incredibly exciting, with each day bringing new scientific and automation problems to solve. I work with an incredibly supportive team and I have no doubt that we will continue to overcome the inevitable challenges that come from working at the forefront of innovation to build out and strengthen our automation capabilities going forward. My first priority was to observe the workflows, identify areas for improvement, and implement changes that enable the generation of faster, more efficient ways of delivering increasingly high-quality data.
This year we have significantly increased the throughput for both our molecular biology and protein workflows, and our routine cell based assays. With the increase in throughput achieved we have been able to reduce our overall design build test learn (DBTL) cycle to under 6 weeks, during which period we can clone, produce, purify and characterise up to 768 antibody designs in disease-relevant cell-based assays.
Can you tell us about the part your role plays in achieving our mission?
I see my role as leading and developing a tech savvy group of automation scientists who have a good grasp of the science behind the biological assays and processes that require automation. By understanding the biology and the nature of the materials that we handle, we can develop better processes that use appropriate robotics and laboratory automation with high precision liquid handling techniques.
Where do you see LabGenius four years from now and what excites you about the company’s future?
In four years from now I see LabGenius as the centre of excellence in delivering automated, high-throughput generation and screening of immunotherapeutic candidates to treat a variety of pathological conditions with hitherto unmet medical needs. I see an exciting opportunity and a bright future for LabGenius to build on our automation platform and deliver more, faster, so that we can achieve our ultimate goal of treating patients.
Where do you think machine intelligence will have the biggest impact on the discovery and development of new drugs?
I believe machine intelligence will have the biggest impact on the development of new drugs by enabling scientists to accurately predict the molecule design features that will outperform existing marketed drugs in record time. The full impact of machine learning will be realised by the models that can intelligently predict the best candidates to progress in fewer iterations. This will only be truly possible through the use of automated processes to minimise noise in the workflows, allowing the algorithms to focus on biologically relevant variance in the data.
Do you have plans to grow your team?
As we grow and become increasingly successful, I envisage the automation team will also grow to keep up with the demand of the ever changing nature of the challenges that lie ahead. For my team in particular, growth means delivering more data, faster, so that as a company we progress only the best performing molecules into the clinic!
Thank you for your insights Mohammed, and welcome to the team!
To finish, we asked our CTO, Dr. Leonard Wossnig, to comment on the importance and impact of the Head of Automation role at LabGenius.
“Through the development of bespoke automated pipelines, Mohammed and his team are enabling the generation of large amounts of high-quality disease-relevant data — this data is a crucial precursor to the effective use of machine learning, meaning that sophisticated automation solutions are central to the success of our platform.”
Feeling inspired? We’re hiring across research and development, so if you would like to learn more about having a career with LabGenius, visit our careers page.
