Transcriptic Partners with IndieBio to Provide Automated Lab Outsourcing Services For Startups

Transcriptic and IndieBio, a San Francisco based biotech accelerator are partnering together to provide selected startups with free robotic cloud services as part of IndieBio’s next acceleration program.

Transcriptic, a silicon valley based startup is trying out the often used marketing model applied by cloud internet providers and illegal drug dealers. Initially providing free services and getting new companies accustomed to outsourcing their laboratory experiments, with the hopes the they will come for more. More than $60,000 worth of free services will be available to companies selected by IndieBio for their next batch. By providing low cost molecular and cell biology services the company is giving an example of labels research and how biotech companies can save time and cost. Read more about Transcriptic here.

IndieBio has been one of the few biotechnology focused accelerators that seek to equip companies in sectors of life sciences. Around 30 companies are on-boarded every year in two batches who are provided all the necessary tools, networks and training to better understand their market and create a functioning company. Applications for the second batch of 2015 will soon be opened to global biotech focused companies.

Lab Outsourcing for Startups

The partnership will give 15 selected startups the ability to outsource their repetitive molecular biology work to automated laboratories in Transcriptic’s 10,000 sq. ft Melno Park facility. By removing manual labor and wet labs out of a company’s list of expenses, Transcriptic is in a way accelerating research and driving down cost of starting up. However, we are still skeptical about the how the company will enable serendipity and creativity with boring excel sheets filled with data and some images. One thing’s for sure, the ability to outsource research to the cloud will increased new companies entering in the area of life sciences such as food, biomaterials to personalised medicine. However, Entrepreneurs and researchers will have to look elsewhere for serendipity for now.