Drug discovery breakthrough

Sphere Fluidics – which has raised more than $6 million in funding to date – has developed unique technology for single cell analysis and characterisation, and provides proprietary products and novel services for this rapidly-growing market. It has chosen product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants to help create its Cyto-Mine™ single cell analysis instrument.

“This will be revolutionary for the biopharmaceutical discovery and development market,” said Dr Frank F Craig, CEO of Sphere Fluidics. “After an exacting selection process, we have chosen Cambridge Consultants as our partner in the product engineering. It is a world-class technology company with expertise in microfluidics, optoelectronics and picodroplets – which are critical for our success.”

The Cyto-Mine™ instrument is designed to accelerate and enable the discovery of diverse antibodies from primary B-cells – which fight infection – or hybrid cells known as hybridomas. The technology is capable of identifying and retrieving single cells from vast populations of cells – and will be able to perform millions of novel single cell assays automatically. It is also up to 100 times more accurate than existing devices when it comes to monoclonality – producing identical copies of an original cell.

As well as helping in the search for new biopharmaceutical treatments, the breakthrough technology also has potential uses in synthetic biology, antibiotic resistance screening and single cell diagnostics. Cambridge Consultants is using its world-class expertise in the design and development of life science instrumentation and pharmaceutical drug discovery technology to transform the innovative concept into a commercial reality.

“Our track record of engineering excellence makes Cambridge Consultants the development partner of choice for clients ranging from small, ambitious start-ups right the way through to multinational blue-chip organisations,” said John Pritchard, head of diagnostics at Cambridge Consultants.

“Our unique mixture of multidisciplinary skills underpinned by deep core science expertise – coupled with our 50-year history of helping clients bring innovative products to market fast – means we can give companies vital competitive edge when it comes to clinical diagnostics and life science instrumentation.”