Berkeley lights, Inc. (BLI) is committed to developing and commercializing an integrated platform for biopharmaceutical, genomics and cell therapy applications. Bli launched its first commercial platform in December 2016: beacon "single cell photoconductive system" *. The platform is suitable for cell line development and antibody development of direct B cells (plasma and memory cells). The flexibility of beacon platform enables users to automate biological processes, and bli continues to develop new applications to meet the needs of partners. Bli's technology enables customers to accelerate learning and dynamically advance the biopharmaceutical development process.

Beacon's "single cell photoconductive system" can screen thousands of antibody producing cells in 48 hours. Cell performance was evaluated by a series of single or multiple fluorescent labeling experiments, including antigen specificity, relative affinity and functional response of soluble and membrane bound antibodies. Single cells with ideal performance were selected and exported for subsequent operations. All of these functions are automatic, which greatly saves scientists' manual operation time. Beacon's time saving and automation of antibody development process can lead to faster generation and innovation to develop more valuable target drugs.

Save time and speed up drug marketing

In beacon chip

Technical features:

1. Precise and flexible single cell operation

Beacon's unique photoelectric positioning technology can accurately transfer any single cell to the nanopen (culture chamber) and select the single cell or monoclonal cell of interest.

2. Control single cell from the source

Conventional methods such as limited dilution need several rounds of operation and combine with various methods to find and confirm the monoclonal property. Beacon can directly culture the target cells, what you see is what you get, which can ensure that there is only one cell per nanopen, and automatically remove the multi cells that may exist, so that one round of beacon can easily achieve 99.5% monoclonal. There are image records in the process of import, cultivation, detection and export, and complete reports are generated to provide strong evidence for subsequent declaration.

3. Higher cell production and lower production cost

One in a hundred is not as good as one in a thousand! Conventional methods generally only screen a few hundred clones. Beacon can intervene when the diversity and survival rate of transfected cells are optimal. It can easily select thousands of clones and select cell lines with higher expression level, thus greatly reducing the cost of subsequent production.

4. Save time and speed up drug marketing

Clone screening was shortened from 2-3 months to 5 days, plasma cell antibody detection was shortened from 3-6 months to 3 days, and cloning process was shortened from 3 weeks to 2 days……

5. High flux

Each batch can operate on 14000 or 7000 single cells; the cloning efficiency is 3-8 times higher than other technologies, up to 80%, so the actual effective flux is higher.

6. Diversified on chip detection

Real time IgG secretion, multi genus binding, growth rate, cell surface marker, phenotype screening, activity / death test, multiple experiment, affinity test, multi antigen screening, report cell test and other functional experiments.

7. Because it is small, it is sensitive

Conventional single cell placed in the micro well plate needs several weeks to culture, and tens of thousands of cells can detect secretory protein; while the volume of each nanopen of beacon is only 0.5-1nl, which is one hundred thousandth of the micropore of 384 well plate. The concentration of secreted protein is very high, which is easy to detect and easily reach the level of single cell detection, such as IgG titer detection of single B cells.

8. Fully automatic operation

The integrated design can greatly reduce the human operation error and system error during the function conversion, with high accuracy and cost performance.

9. Biological safety cabinet

It can be directly used for subsequent culture or production. Security cabinet level:Integrated BSC Class II, A1 compatible airflow. Dual ULPA filtration. Exceeds Cleanroom Class 100, ISO Class 5.

Application examples

1. Cell line development: it takes 2-3 months of clonal screening, which is reduced to only 5 days, and ensures that the production of cell lines is higher and can easily reach 99.5% clonality; it can fundamentally reduce the cost and accelerate the drug marketing; the whole process of image recording and perfect report can provide strong evidence for subsequent declaration.

2. Plasma B-cell AB discovery: conventional hybridoma or phage display technology usually takes 3-6 months, but now it only takes 3 days to obtain specific antibody sequence. Single plasma cells can be directly isolated and detected in 0.5nl system, from which target cells expressing specific antibodies can be screened, and their heavy chain and light chain mRNA can be obtained. After reverse transcription, they can be directly used for sequencing and optimization.

3. Cloning: to avoid the tedious and time-consuming problems of conventional methods such as artificial planing, single cells are directly transferred to 0.5-1nl nanopen (culture chamber) through WYSIWYG method for cloning or subcloning, and the whole process is monitored and detected.

4. More applications: cell line stability screening, antibody engineering, memory B cell antibody discovery, gene editing, tumor immunotherapy, cell co culture research, tumor microenvironment research, stem cell research……