Company:

Q: Where does the name "CellASIC" derive from?

A: "CellASIC" is a combination of two terms: 1) "Cell," which is the basic unit of life on Earth, and 2) ASIC, a term from the electronics industry standing for "Application Specific Integrated Circuit." This term fits with our technology since we make application specific microfluidic circuits, using methods borrowed from the semiconductor industry. The correct pronunciation of CellASIC is: "sel-ay-sik."

Q: How did the company start?

A: CellASIC was started out of the Bioengineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley (http://bioeng.berkeley.edu). In early 2003, two graduate students, Paul Hung and Philip Lee, began work in the laboratory of Prof. Luke Lee to utilize microfabrication methods to improve laboratory cell culture methods. What began as a quest to engineer a "better Petri Dish" eventually led to the formation of CellASIC Corp.

Q: What is it like working at a bioengineering startup?

A: It's amazing.

Technology:

Q: How does your approach differ from other microfluidic devices that have been published over the years?

A: Our technology is derived from the tried and true "academic microfluidics" that have been popular since the late 1990s. The key difference with CellASIC's approach is an emphasis on commercial quality devices. This means our microfluidics are more uniform, guaranteed to work, extensively validated, easy to use, time-saving, foolproof, and meant to be used by the bench researcher without a Ph.D. in bioengineering.

Q: How does your core technology differentiate from other microfluidic companies?

A: While there are many excellent companies working on microfluidics, CellASIC is the leading company developing systems to address long-term cell culture in a laboratory setting. Our belief is that "happy cells make for happy scientists." Since a human cell lives in a microscale world, we believe that a properly designed microdevice will make a big difference. At CellASIC, we have been studying the nuances of the interface of micro-engineering with cell behavior since the beginning.

Q: What is the future of microfluidics?

A: There will likely be many great applications of microfluidics in biology, but our belief is that there is a fundamental unmet need in the growing field of cell biology. For decades, scientists have been content to look at derivatized cell lines in highly artificial environments (Petri/plastic dishes). The field has now reached a point where will be necessary to replace this archaic approach with technology better able to maintain cells in their native states. In this regard, microfluidics offers an extremely promising solution with limitless applications.

Products:

Q: What does the ONIX™ do?

A: The ONIX™ represents the first commercial system that utilizes sophisticated microfluidic engineering to deliver an improved live cell environment. On top of this, we have created an extremely powerful and easy to use system for live cell microscopy. The immediate benefit that will shock most scientists accustomed to "old school" perfusion chambers is how simple it is to use the ONIX to culture cells directly on the microscope stage. What used to be a nerve-wracking ordeal is now easy enough for the novice undergraduate student to operate. (You still have to figure out your microscope software-- sorry, that's not part of our efforts.) But the real hidden gem of the ONIX product is that once biologists start working in our microfluidic format, it will become apparent that the enhanced environment does make a difference in the quality of experiments that can be run.

Q: What types of experiments can I run with the ONIX?

A: The ONIX system is particularly useful for time-lapsed live cell microscopy. This covers a large range of possible experiments. Some of the most common uses include: GFP/CFP/YFP expression, protein localization, cell cycle analysis, kinetic response to solution change, and cell motility analysis.

Q: What types of cells can I culture in the micro-chambers?

A: The chambers are carefully designed to be suitable for even the most sensitive cell types. In general, any cell that can be cultured on a glass slide will thrive in the microfluidic chamber. The small volume of the chamber also makes this system especially useful for primary cell culture.

Q: Why is the ONIX™ system so inexpensive?

A: A complete flow/temperature/CO2 controlled system from other companies typically sells for between 2-8X what we offer. The reason we can offer such an improvement in price (not to mention quality) is a combination of technology and design. For a cell imaging experiment, what the scientist really cares about is a few hundred cells in a volume of a few microliters. Unfortunately, current tools are designed for millions of cells (plastic dish) and volumes of many liters (microscope enclosures). What we have done is to focus in on engineering the tiny space around the cells, to eliminate the "over engineering" of other systems. This is only possible when used in combination of our patent pending microfluidic cell culture devices.

Q: What's the catch for your free trial?

A: No catch. We do this because we are confident you will be amazed by our system. Hopefully you will end up purchasing the system, as a high percentage of our trial participants do. But even if you don't, we benefit by the experience since we now have one more person in the world who has seen our work-- and maybe you'll tell a friend. We welcome you to test our system against all competitors, as the best decision is an informed decision.

Q: Are you working on additional products?

A: Our goal is to advance the way humans understand living cells. If you can understand cells, you can begin to understand tissues, then organs, and possibly the entire person. There is much work to be done. The ONIX™ is the first step in this journey. We definitely plan to launch additional products as soon as we deem them ready.