PR83806

Berkeley Lights Launches Two New Capabilities in the Opto Cell Therapy Development 1.0 Workflow to Accelerate the Creation Of Effective Cancer Immunotherapies

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Apr. 28, 2020 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/--

-- The new multiplex cytokine and cytotoxicity assays as a part of the Opto

Cell Therapy Development 1.0 workflow will help users of the Berkeley Lights'

platform develop cancer immunotherapies faster

Today, Berkeley Lights, Inc., a leader in Digital Cell Biology, launched new

capabilities to empower the Opto Cell Therapy Development 1.0 workflow. The

workflow consists of a collection of software capabilities, reagents, and

protocols to be run on the Beacon(R)and Lightning(TM) systems. With the new

capabilities researchers can now perform multiple functional assays on

thousands of individual T cells in just days, allowing them to recover live

cells for downstream genomic analysis. This ultimately enables Berkeley Lights'

customers to link T cell phenotype and function to genotype on individual

cells, consolidating the T cell functional analytic process into one innovative

platform.

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T cell-based therapies have shown great promise for cancer treatment, but

developing these therapies is challenging because the process of killing

cancerous tumors by T cells relies on studying and screening multiple

cell-to-cell interactions--a time-consuming and complex procedure. Current

techniques to assess T cell function don't allow scientists to collect all of

the required data from the same cell. The new multiplex cytokine assay and the

cytotoxicity assay, along with the recently launched TCRseq Well Plate Kit

allow scientists to define and test the function of individual T cells. These

applications enable simultaneous functional interrogation of thousands of

individual T cells as they interact with antigen-presenting cells or tumors.

Live, individual clones can be recovered for downstream expansion or genomic

analysis. The Opto Cell Therapy Development 1.0 workflow enables CAR-T cell

phenotypic and functional screening, and the discovery of T cell receptors

(TCRs) associated with specific T cell behaviors.

"With the Opto Cell Therapy Development 1.0 workflow, users of Berkeley Lights'

platform can now tailor the development of cell therapies that mediate the

rapid destruction of multiple tumor cells to the few T cells that really do all

the work," said John Proctor, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Marketing at

Berkeley Lights. "The cytotoxicity assay visualizes killing activity from

single T cells, such as multiplexed and serial killing, followed by live cell

recovery for genomic analysis. This new assay avoids common problems associated

with traditional killing assays, which measure average target cell lysis at

fixed time points, obscuring kinetic details and ignoring the heterogeneity

present in T cell subsets."

Berkeley Lights will continue to release more cell therapy related capabilities

to the Berkeley Lights platform in the coming months. Email

info@berkeleylights.com for more info.

About Berkeley Lights

Here at Berkeley Lights, we think cells are awesome! Cells are capable of

manufacturing cures for diseases, fibers for clothing, energy in the form of

biofuels, and food proteins for nutrition. So the question is, if nature is

capable of manufacturing the products we need in a scalable way, why aren't we

doing more of this? Well, the answer is that with the solutions available

today, it is hard. It takes a long time to find the right cell for a specific

job, costs lots of money, and if you have picked a suboptimal cell line, has a

very low process yield. The Berkeley Lights Platform delivers and links deep

phenotypic, functional, and genotypic information at the single cell level.

This is a new way to capture and interpret the qualitative language of biology

and translate it into single cell specific digital information, which we call

Digital Cell Biology. Using our platform, customers have the complete solution

to find the best cells by functionally screening and recovering individual

cells for antibody discovery, cell line development, cell therapy development,

and synthetic biology. Using our systems and solutions, scientists can find the

best cells, the first time they look. For more information, visit

www.berkeleylights.com.

Berkeley Lights' Beacon and Lightning systems and Culture Station instrument

are for research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

SOURCE: Berkeley Lights, Inc.

Press Contact: berkeleylights@bulleitgroup.com