Redshift Bio Aurora UX | 2023

Designer: Loft Design, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Manufacturer: RedShift BioAnalytics, Inc., Boxborough, Massachusetts, USA

The pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive, with companies striving to bring innovative drugs to market faster and faster. Speeding up the drug discovery process provides a competitive edge, enabling companies to secure patents, establish market leadership, and capture greater market share.

The use of advanced analytical techniques is revolutionizing the drug discovery process. Biotech companies are leveraging these technologies to accelerate breakthroughs, generate innovative ideas, and develop new drugs and treatments.

Microfluidic Modulation Spectroscopy (MMS) is a novel spectroscopic tool that directly addresses the limitations of current technologies by facilitating direct analysis of secondary structure over a wide concentration range in complex formulations without the need for buffer exchange or dilution. It plays a crucial role in various scientific fields, including biophysics, biochemistry, drug discovery, and materials science, allowing researchers to gain insights into molecular interactions, binding affinities, structural changes, and other important aspects of the samples under investigation.

RedShift BioAnalytics is a company specializing in the field of spectroscopy and microfluidics. They are known for their proprietary life sciences platform combining Microfluidic Modulation Spectroscopy (MMS) and expertise in high-powered quantum cascade lasers providing ultra-sensitive and ultra-precise measurements of molecular structure.

Accurate and highly sensitive measurements of molecular structure are crucial to accelerate drug discovery by both academia and pharmaceutical companies. These measurements provide valuable insights into the interactions between drug molecules and their targets, aiding in the optimization and development of effective and safe drugs.

The Redshift MMS technology stands out as an automated technique offering ultra-sensitive and ultra-precise structural measurements of proteins and biomolecules. These capabilities make it a valuable tool in accelerating drug development processes.

Redshift introduced the technology in 2018 with their first generation AQS3pro. With its ability to provide highly detailed and accurate molecular structural information, the Redshift MMS technology gives researchers insights into the interactions, conformational changes, and dynamics of biomolecules. This can significantly contribute to the identification and optimization of drug candidates, ultimately expediting the drug development timeline.

After successfully leveraging the MMS technology for a few years, Redshift was looking to create a new generation of laboratory instruments that were able to push the envelope on what was possible with MMS. Designing a system with a smaller sample volume and easier throughput with a fully integrated computing platform at its core would make this technology useful in academia and pharma labs alike, helping scientists discover new applications for the technology.

Redshift Bio collaborated with Loft to develop Aurora, the next generation MMS instrument. The team worked on the core technology to drastically decrease the sample volume, reduce the overall footprint, and integrate a custom touchscreen. Redshift Bio also teamed up with Loft on a comprehensive user experience (UX) design that would put the UX at the center of the Aurora experience.

Loft initiated the design process by conducting preliminary research to gather insights on the proposed platform, followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the entire user experience. This process informed the development of the platform's information architecture, leading to a prototype of the optimal user interface. The interface elements were refined through testing with Redshifts laboratory users, resulting in a user-friendly design that truly met their needs.

Aurora is revolutionizing the MMS workflow with a compact instrument that is streamlined and easy to use. This innovative package allows industry and academia labs to work with smaller sample volumes, enabling them to push the boundaries of structural characterizations for biomolecules. With Aurora, researchers can achieve more advanced and precise analyses with reduced sample requirements, opening up new possibilities for studying the intricacies of biomolecular structures.