About CellASIC - 2007 News


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News & Events 2007


October 23 :CellASIC Opens Microfluidics Manufacturing Facility The CellASIC team is happy to announce the opening of its new Class 100 cleanroom in San Leandro, California. This facility will enable the company to improve the manufacturing capability of its microfluidic products. Since 2005, the company has been working on developing a novel production method for cell culture based microfluidic products. "This facility allows us to integrate our proprietary manufacturing process into a state-of-the-art controlled environment," states Dr. Paul Hung, CTO of CellASIC. "This will directly result in higher yield and faster turnaround time in product manufacturing. The controlled environment also guarantees product reliability and robustness, permitting CellASIC to continue bringing the highest quality microfluidic tools to our customers." The completion of the customized cleanroom represents a critical step towards the company's mission to develop and commercialize innovative microfluidic products for cell and tissue based applications. Funding for the facility was provided with help from a National Institutes of Health SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant to promote"Manufacturing Processes of Medical, Dental, and Biological Technologies."

August 27: Early Adoption of CellASIC's ONIX Platform for yeast exceeds expectations Laboratories around the world are quickly integrating the new ONIX Imaging System into their research. Since its release, research facilities have adopted the ONIX technology at an astounding rate, including over 30 laboratories from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, UCSF, Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and more. Globally, ONIX Systems are being used at cutting-edge research facilities in England, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Switzerland, and France. Scientists are praising the capabilities of the ONIX, pointing to its ease of use and innovative flow switching technology. Dr. Farzad Haerizadeh at Stanford uses the ONIX to look at FRET responses within individual engineered yeast cells and says, “CellASIC has developed a great solution for our live cell imaging needs. The ONIX not only places cutting-edge microfluidic technology in our hands, but saves us time on sample preparation and gives us improved quality and quantity of data.” Other features that the ONIX brings to researchers, such as improved optical clarity, have also generated positive responses. “The microfluidic flow-chamber for yeast from CellASIC is great! It is easy to use and the optics are top-notch. The "optical trap" property of the flow-chamber is perhaps its best attribute; it keeps all of the yeast in the same focal plane,” said Steve Minkin, a University of Tennessee PhD Candidate in the Becker Lab, who uses fluid switching to observe changes in the localization of GFP-tagged protein. “It is hands-down the best flow chamber we’ve seen for studying yeast.” The ONIX system represents the first microfluidic product commercialized by CellASIC Corporation. The company has been focused on research and development of cutting-edge microfluidic technology since it was founded in 2004 out of the UC Berkeley Department of Bioengineering. “Our basic premise is to make the highest quality microfluidics accessible to cell biologists in a user-friendly and affordable product line,” states Dr. Philip Lee, Director of R&D at CellASIC. “We are especially encouraged to see that our technology is enabling experiments that were never before possible.”

August 1: CellASIC receives 2-year NIH SBIR award to improve microfluidic cell array manufacturing

July 12: ONIX Yeast System Featured in Bioscience Technology The ONIX Yeast System for live cell imaging was featured in the July Issue of Bioscience Technology Magazine. The product was spotlighted in the Editor’s Choice section of new innovative products. Click Here to see the product release

June 27: CellASIC announces the ONIX™ Platform for live cell microscopy of yeast samples CellASIC Corporation has developed the ONIX™ microfluidic system for live cell imaging of yeast samples. This represents the first and only product on the market that enables fluidic environment control during time-lapse imaging without sacrificing optical quality. The innovative microfluidic approach provides distinct advantages over current methods. For example, agar pads are the standard for localization of yeast cells for time lapse imaging, but prevent fluidic addressing. Coated chamber slides allow fluidic access, but cannot stably maintain cells for high resolution microscopy over time. The CellASIC ONIX platform overcomes these limitations by implementing a microfluidic trap that holds yeast cells in perfect focus without obstructing fluid exchange. Furthermore, the integrated system streamlines the experiment process by reducing preparation time and providing more reliable results. Yeast represents a biologically important model organism to study signaling pathways in living cells. Marc Green, an imaging specialist in Susan Forsburg’s lab at the University of Southern California (http://www.pombe.net), is using the CellASIC platform to investigate cell cycle and DNA replication in fission yeast in order to uncover mechanisms that influence human health, ranging from cancer development to infertility and birth defects. According to Marc, “The CellASIC system is the first affordable solution we have found that will allow us to extensively manipulate the extracellular environment of our organism while imaging at high-resolution. Imagine trying to monitor a protein's location in a moving cell - this is practically impossible, and well beyond the capability of existing laboratory microscope tools. CellASIC has solved this problem. This product is easy to use, and provides the highest quality results I have seen in yeast.” The benefits of the CellASIC product also resonate with scientists in the emerging field of cellular systems engineering. Noah Helman, a post-doc in Wendell Lim’s lab at the University of California, San Francisco (http://www.ucsf.edu/limlab), is applying the CellASIC platform to reengineering cellular pathways to generate novel response profiles in yeast cells. “Before we had this system, we were fabricating devices ourselves, which was time-intensive and less reliable. Now I can focus on designing new experiments that were not previously possible.”

June 22: CellASIC publishes a microfluidic tumor model for drug screening CellASIC Corporation reports the application of microfluidic cell culture technology to create an in vitro tumor model for improved drug screening. This method, published in the journal Biotechnology Progress, creates an array of micro-bioreactors that mimic the mass transport properties of solid tumors. The array is formatted to a standard 96-well layout, making it compatible with existing screening instrumentation. "This paper represents a key milestone in CellASIC's mission to develop the next generation of cell screening platforms," said Dr. Philip Lee, Director of Research at CellASIC. "We are now at a point where we can create precise arrays of complex microfluidic cell culture units in a user-friendly format. The next step is to scale the platform for implementation in high throughput automated assays." This research was funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies (IMAT) Program and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. See related article at DrugResearcher.com Request reprints of Biotechnology Progress manuscript

February 7: Microfluidic hepatocyte culture method published in Biotechnology & Bioengineering

January 23: CellASIC presents "Microfluidic Platform for Live Cell Screening" at Laboratory Automation, Palm Springs, CA