Case Study: AstraZeneca achieves rapid, cost-efficient automated DNA assembly with Benchling

How AstraZeneca created an automated DNA assembly framework to support rapid and cost-efficient construct generation

AstraZeneca faced a major bottleneck in early drug discovery: generating DNA constructs for recombinant protein production and cell-line engineering was time-consuming and costly, especially for long or complex sequences. Rapidly producing many validated plasmids is critical to screen candidates and advance projects, but traditional de novo synthesis and manual tracking limited throughput and drove expense.

To fix this, AstraZeneca built FRAGLER, an algorithmic fragment-recycling and fragmentation approach, and integrated it with Benchling plus automated lab workflows and a design/request portal. By identifying and reusing shared fragments, breaking long sequences into 300–900 bp pieces, and automating synthesis, pooling, assembly and QC, they reduced end-to-end plasmid generation to ~3 weeks (vs 4–8) and cut DNA synthesis costs by 50–90% (SARS‑CoV‑2 spike work showed a 55.3% base-pair recycle rate), while increasing throughput and data quality through a single, automated platform.

AstraZeneca

David Öling

Associate Principal Scientist