PhenomeX Inc. 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, 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. Opto T Cell Profiled 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.