CAMBRIDGE, England & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lightcast Discovery Ltd., a life science tools company developing a novel single-cell functional analysis platform, today announced the opening of its new Innovation Center in the United States to accelerate the global expansion of its Luminary early access program (EAP). Located within the LabCentral community in Cambridge, Mass., the new office and laboratory facility will augment the company’s Cambridge, UK, headquarters and provide regional support to its growing list of collaborators across North America.
Lightcast is advancing single-cell functional analysis with a droplet-based platform that can load, select, process, analyze, and recover tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of individual cells at the same time. This novel technology enables the manipulation of addressable picoliter droplets with light in a massively parallel manner, enabling sequential assays querying individual cell function and cell-cell interactions. Lightcast’s platform provides the flexibility to analyze a wide range of cell types and assays, as well as the precision to meticulously control and monitor the number, occupancy, location, and movement of each droplet. The approach will streamline workflows for drug discovery and development, and promote translational and basic research advancements.
“In the second half of 2023, we launched the Luminary early access program to engage with leading experts in translational research and drug development, enabling us to collaboratively refine and enhance our respective technologies and workflows,” said Paul Steinberg, CCO at Lightcast. “We now have a growing number of European and North American laboratories participating, and today I am delighted to announce the expansion of the Luminary EAP to ensure we prioritize the development of applications that promise the highest impact on scientific advancement and therapeutic development.”
Lightcast's Luminary program enables royalty-free, pre-commercial technology access and is designed to showcase the full utility of the technology in important drug development and translational research. The Innovation Center will also provide access to partners across the LabCentral community, many of whom are focused on the development of cell-based therapies that can be further accelerated by the Lightcast technology.
With the expansion of the Luminary EAP, Lightcast is seeking collaborative partners who are interested in being among the first to evaluate and apply the unprecedented flexibility and scalability of its droplet-based technology. To set up a platform demonstration or to learn more about the Luminary EAP, visit www.lightcast.bio/luminary-program.
Lightcast will be showcasing its novel technology platform and sharing early access collaborator successes during the PEGS Boston Summit this week in booth #706. Kathrin Herbst, PhD, Director of Science and Business Development at Lightcast, will be giving a presentation about how to accelerate drug development with flexible, scalable, single-cell functional analysis on Monday, May 13, at 10:00 am ET. For more information on the conference, please visit www.pegsummit.com.
About Lightcast
Lightcast Discovery aims to unleash new capabilities within the single-cell analysis field by developing a more accessible, scalable, and flexible platform for scientists in basic, translational, and applied research. These capabilities will empower new biological discoveries and accelerate the development of novel drugs, therapies, and biologics. Founded in 2019 and based in Cambridge, UK, Lightcast has invented a technology that uses rays of light to control picoliter-scale droplets for functional analysis of individual cells. For more information, visit www.lightcast.bio.
