Arctoris today announces the launch of its Biophysics Centre of Excellence, a major expansion of infrastructure, expertise and strategic partnerships designed to meet accelerating global demand for high-fidelity experimental data in AI-driven drug discovery.
Tom Fleming, Co-Founder and CEO said: “Our new biophysics Centre of Excellence signals our total commitment to the acceleration of drug discovery progress through the provision of robust, scalable, and AI-ready datasets.”
The new centre represents a tenfold expansion of Arctoris’ biophysical instrumentation park and a substantial increase in laboratory footprint. The investment responds directly to a structural shift in the industry: generative molecular design and AI-first pipelines are dramatically increasing the need for precise, scalable and mechanistically rich experimental validation. Arctoris’ expanded capacity positions the company as a global reference site for quantitative molecular interaction science at industrial scale.
10X Expansion in Instrumentation and Data Generation Capacity
The Centre of Excellence significantly increases Arctoris’ throughput across surface plasmon resonance (SPR), solution-phase biophysics, protein characterisation and thermodynamic analysis. The expanded platform includes:
Together, these technologies enable orthogonal, quantitative interrogation of molecular interactions across small molecules, fragments, peptides and biologics. Orthogonal validation across surface-based and solution-state techniques mitigates artefacts, deconvolutes complex binding mechanisms and enables confident progression from hit identification to lead optimisation. The result is massively increased experimental data generation capacity, delivering high-quality kinetic, thermodynamic and developability datasets at the scale required for modern AI pipelines.
Exclusive Early Access to Instromeda SPRneo
Arctoris becomes one of the first laboratories globally to deploy Instromeda's SPRneo system. The SPRneo represents a new generation of autonomous biophysical instrumentation: a fully automated, and connected Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) system with embedded intelligence, validated in pharmaceutical and CRO environments.
The platform enables researchers to declare experimental intent while the system autonomously designs protocols, executes runs, optimizes conditions in real time, and performs live analysis. Integration-ready APIs and SiLA2 compatibility allow seamless embedding within Arctoris' autonomous laboratory infrastructure. By combining gold-standard SPR data quality with AI-assisted execution, the collaboration advances intelligent, distributed, machine-orchestrated drug discovery.
Founders Klaus Wiehler and Adam Miles said: "You can't build a self-driving lab from instruments that were designed for humans in the loop. SPRneo was architected from the ground up to operate as an autonomous node: it accepts intent, not instructions. That's the piece that's been missing from lab automation, and we're excited to prove what becomes possible when you deploy it inside infrastructure like Arctoris has built."
The partnership will demonstrate closed-loop experimental optimization at scale, where SPR measurements inform real-time decision-making in AI-driven discovery workflows. This deployment marks a shift from faster execution to genuine scientific autonomy: experiments that are dynamically designed, optimized, and interpreted without human intervention.
Formal Collaborations with Instromeda and SPRNexus
The Centre of Excellence formalises strategic collaborations with Instromeda and SPRNexus to advance automated SPR workflows and next-generation data analysis frameworks. These partnerships focus on:
The objective is to transform SPR from a capacity-constrained specialist technique into a scalable, autonomous validation backbone for AI-native drug discovery.
Exclusive Access to Cutting-Edge Molecular Characterisation via FIDA
Arctoris’ deployment of FIDA Bio introduces immobilisation-free, solution-state characterisation under near-native conditions. This capability is particularly powerful for weak, transient or complex interactions and membrane protein systems that challenge traditional surface-based techniques. Combined with SPR, ITC, and MST, the Centre delivers a uniquely comprehensive, orthogonal interaction profiling capability within a single integrated environment.
Appointment of Dr Iva Navratilova as Expert in Residence
Arctoris also announces the appointment of Dr Iva Navratilova as Expert in Residence at the Biophysics Centre of Excellence.
Dr Navratilova is internationally recognised for pioneering the use of surface plasmon resonance as a primary screening platform in fragment-based drug discovery. Her work established practical workflows for large-scale SPR fragment screening, including multiple-referencing strategies and ligand-efficiency-driven hit qualification, enabling reliable detection of weak binders and reducing false positives in low-affinity regimes.
She has played a leading role in extending SPR methodologies to challenging membrane targets, including G-protein-coupled receptors, demonstrating that carefully engineered biosensor assays can deliver pharmacologically relevant insights aligned with functional data. Her contributions have shaped best practice in assay design, kinetic analysis and translational integration of biophysical binding data into medicinal chemistry decision-making.
As Expert in Residence, Dr Navratilova will guide experimental design standards, fragment screening strategy, membrane protein assay development and kinetic selectivity frameworks across Arctoris programmes, ensuring that expanded capacity is matched by methodological excellence.
Alignment with the UK AI for Science Strategy
The Biophysics Centre of Excellence is aligned with the UK’s AI for Science Strategy, which calls for integrated computational and experimental infrastructures to accelerate scientific discovery. By coupling large-scale autonomous experimentation with AI-driven hypothesis generation and data interpretation, Arctoris exemplifies the closed-loop discovery paradigm central to this national agenda.
The Centre provides the physical infrastructure required to translate AI-generated hypotheses into quantitative, high-integrity experimental evidence at scale. This alignment strengthens the UK’s position as a global leader in AI-enabled life sciences innovation.
Expanded Facilities for Future Growth
The launch includes substantial new laboratory space and expansion capacity, designed to accommodate continued growth in instrumentation fleets, autonomous platforms and collaborative programmes. The facility is designed for modular scale-out, supporting distributed orchestration and high parallelisation as AI-driven portfolios continue to diversify.
A New Standard for Quantitative Discovery
The Arctoris Biophysics Centre of Excellence establishes a new benchmark for industrial-scale, AI-integrated molecular interaction science. By combining a tenfold increase in capacity, exclusive access to next-generation autonomous SPR, deep methodological leadership and strategic partnerships, Arctoris delivers the experimental backbone required for the next era of drug discovery.
About Arctoris
Arctoris is a technology-driven contract research organisation (CRO) that provides high-precision, automated drug discovery services. Founded in Oxford, UK, the company operates Ulysses®, its proprietary end-to-end robotic laboratory platform.
By integrating advanced robotics with real-time data capture, Arctoris significantly reduces human error and improves the reproducibility of biochemical, cell-based, and molecular biology assays. This automated approach allows biotech and pharmaceutical companies to accelerate their drug discovery timelines from target validation to lead optimisation.
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