DIAGNOSTICS
PRNewswire | June 06, 2023
PhenomeX Inc. the functional cell biology company, announced the launch of the Beacon Quest™ optofluidic system, with Opto® T Cell Profiling workflows for immunotherapy translational research and a platform price under $1 million USD, less than half of the higher-throughput Beacon system, enabling broader accessibility to the cutting-edge technology critical for next-generation precision medicine.
The Opto T Cell Profiling workflows have enabled scientists to comprehensively profile single T cells to correlate polyfunctionality with cytotoxicity and recover those same cells for downstream analysis such as transcriptome and genome sequencing, revealing functional connections of phenotype with molecular mechanism. This depth of understanding of biology and response to therapeutics is not available on any other platform. Combined with the value-matched Beacon Quest system, more academic, non-profit, and government customers can now access the power of optofluidic and NanoPen® chamber technology and propriety single T Cell Profiling applications along with the optimum level of features to meet their research and budgetary needs.
"At PhenomeX, we are excited to launch the Beacon Quest, as it supports our objective of offering scientists and researchers globally the ability to affordably access the main applications of the Beacon system, including antibody discovery, cell line development and single-cell functional multiomic T-cell profiling," said Siddhartha Kadia, Ph.D., chief executive officer of PhenomeX. "We look forward to partnering with and providing significant value in the academic research segments, particularly in immuno-oncology translational cancer centers and innovative cell and gene therapy development centers."
Beacon Quest for T Cell Profiling Workflow Features
Opto T Cell Profiling workflows on the Beacon Quest system enable multi-functional characterization of single T cells, including for development of efficacious immunotherapies and cell-based cancer therapeutics, that are ideally suited for academic, non-profit, and government customers.
The Beacon Quest system enables a variety of assays to profile single T cells including detection of cytokine secretion, cytotoxicity, cell surface markers, transcriptome profiling and TCRSeq, with the potential to study growth characteristics and cell motility. The resulting analysis is used to identify cells with phenotypes of interest and guide recovery of the same cells for downstream assays, enabling researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying biology by
Investigating molecular mechanisms associated with polyfunctional T cells;
Identifying desirable phenomes by correlating polyfunctionality with cytotoxicity; and
Linking desirable phenotypes to T cell receptor sequences of the same cells.
In addition to supporting the Opto T Cell Profiling workflows, Beacon Quest will enable customers to access the Opto B Discovery workflows and Opto Cell Line Development workflows. To further increase customer accessibility and affordability, PhenomeX will also offer reduced priced OptoSelect® chips (OptoSelect® Research chips) for Beacon Quest, helping academic customers accelerate the pace of scientific discovery for clinical research use applications.
About PhenomeX Inc.
PhenomeX is empowering scientists to leverage the full potential of each cell and drive the next era of functional cell biology that will advance human health. We enable scientists to reveal the most complete insights on cell function and obtain a full view of the behavior of each cell. Our unique suite of proven high-throughput tools and services offer unparalleled resolution and speed, accelerating the insights that are key to advancing discoveries that can profoundly improve the prevention and treatment of disease. Our award-winning platforms are used by researchers across the globe, including those at the top 15 global pharmaceutical companies and approximately 85% of leading U.S. comprehensive cancer centers.
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INDUSTRIAL IMPACT, MEDICAL
businesswire | April 20, 2023
Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America, a subsidiary of diversified Japanese multinational company Asahi Kasei, and GeminiBio have entered into a strategic partnership to advance the application of inline buffer formulation (IBF) in the biopharmaceutical industry. Asahi Kasei Bioprocess, with decades of expertise in IBF and the developers of the award-winning MOTIV™ system, and GeminiBio, with industry leading bioprocess liquid manufacturing capabilities, are combining two high-efficiency solutions for buffer management to biopharmaceutical manufacturers in one package. This will result in fewer bottlenecks in manufacturing, streamlining the IBF process. The companies entered the agreement in March 2023 with the initial scope of the North American biopharmaceutical industry.
Buffers are used extensively in the development and manufacturing process for all biopharmaceuticals. The manufacturing of buffers is time consuming and resource intensive, and often a significant bottleneck in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process. The Asahi Kasei Bioprocess MOTIV IBF™ system is built specifically to debottleneck downstream processing to move product more efficiently through the manufacturing process. However, creating the buffer concentrates that are used with these systems has remained a challenge. Pairing MOTIV with GeminiBio’s pre-mixed concentrates provides biopharmaceutical manufacturers a total solution, resulting in a new level of efficiency and cost savings throughout the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process, yielding benefits throughout the entire value chain.
“Our partnership with GeminiBio solidifies both companies’ commitment to improving the efficiency and efficacy of buffer formulation,” says Chris Rombach, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America. “The combination of Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America’s long-standing buffer formulation expertise and GeminiBio’s state-of-the-art buffer concentrate manufacturing capabilities will aid bioprocessors to reduce costs, minimize facility footprint and assure on time, every time buffer production.”
Moving forward, while this collaboration will provide biopharmaceutical manufacturers with immediate benefit, the value is expected to increase exponentially over time with the open sharing of data and joint testing that will spur innovation at both companies. The MOTIV system will be better acclimated to immediately support a wider variety of pre-mixed buffer concentrates as the variety of the concentrates diversifies.
”We are excited to collaborate with Asahi Kasei Bioprocess to help the biotech industry further address the buffer bottleneck”, said Brian Parker, CEO of GeminiBio. “GeminiBio is committed to helping our customers simplify upstream and downstream process liquid manufacturing, and supporting inline dilution with ready to use buffer concentrates for the MOTIV IBF™ system allows us to provide an even higher level of simplification for our customers.”
The partnership between Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America and GeminiBio exemplifies the dedication of the Asahi Kasei Group to its mission of contributing to life and living for people around the world as it paves the way to innovation under their current medium-term management plan: Be a Trailblazer.
About Asahi Kasei Bioprocess
The Fluid Management Business Unit of Asahi Kasei Bioprocess is devoted to solving therapeutic product safety, efficiency, and purity challenges within the pharmaceutical and bioprocessing industries. With technology platforms for oligonucleotide synthesis, buffer formulation, chromatography, and filtration, our bioprocess systems, columns, and automation solutions advance GMP manufacturing of critical drug substances around the world. Built with pride, built with quality, built to exceed expectations.
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INDUSTRY OUTLOOK
Globenewswire | May 29, 2023
Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Inc. a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel molecular glue degrader (MGD)-based medicines, announced its second development candidate, MRT-6160, a novel, potent, and selective molecular glue degrader of VAV1. The Company plans to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for MRT-6160 in the first half of 2024 and to develop the molecule as a potential treatment for autoimmune diseases.
“MRT-6160 is a potent, orally bioavailable MGD designed to degrade VAV1, an important protein involved in the signaling pathways of T and B cells. Our in vitro studies have shown that MRT-6160 selectively degrades VAV1 without detectable effects on other proteins. By targeting VAV1, MRT-6160 attenuates multiple aspects of T- and B-cell function and inhibits disease progression in established in vivo models of autoimmunity,” said Owen Wallace, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Monte Rosa. “The underlying biology and our preclinical data both demonstrate that MRT-6160 acts as an immune modulator, which has the potential to avoid the broad immune suppression seen with other approaches. We look forward to progressing our clinical plan developed with the goal of providing early insights into safety, PK and PD, and proof of concept regarding differentiated effects on key immunomodulatory signaling pathways.”
“Our goal centers on pioneering therapeutically meaningful new drugs for patients with serious diseases. By addressing VAV1, a validated but previously undruggable target, we believe we've created a potentially groundbreaking therapy for patients suffering from a range of serious autoimmune conditions, particularly those involving both T- and B cell-mediated autoimmunity,” said Markus Warmuth, M.D., CEO of Monte Rosa. “MRT-6160 is expected to be our second MGD to enter clinical trials, showcasing the continued productivity of our QuEEN™ platform. We anticipate significant progress and milestones in our portfolio in the upcoming year, including initial clinical data from our GSPT1 MGD, MRT-2359, in the second half of this year and filing of an IND application for MRT-6160 in the first half of next year.”
About Monte Rosa
Monte Rosa Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing novel molecular glue degrader (MGD) medicines for patients with serious diseases such as oncology, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. MGDs are small molecule protein degraders that employ the body’s natural mechanisms to selectively eliminate therapeutically relevant proteins. The Company’s QuEEN™ (Quantitative and Engineered Elimination of Neosubstrates) platform enables it to rapidly identify protein targets and design highly selective degraders by combining diverse libraries of proprietary MGDs with in-house proteomics, structural biology, AI/machine learning, and computational chemistry capabilities.
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