Bruker’s Beacon® systems provide function-first assays at single cell resolution on a microfluidic platform, utilizing the power of light-driven, Opto-Electro Positioning (OEP) to drive targeted, selective cell cloning into Nanopen® chambers capable of continual media perfusion and cell culture, whilst supporting a variety of assays and assessments across the chip architecture. These include:
Live Cell Imaging and Culture
- Morphology
- Surface Markers and phenotyping
In-Channel Assays
- Real-time IgG Secretion
- Multi Antigen Screening
- Multi Species Binding
- Reporter Cell Assays
In-Pen Assays
- Viral Blocking Assays
- Ligand Blocking Assays
- Cell-Cell Interaction
- Cytokine Assays
- Apoptosis Assays
- Tumor Killing Assays
- Bulk Fluorescence Assays
- Proliferation
The flexibility of the Beacon® platform empowers users to continuously collect data that can be used to determine fitness criteria to recover the most relevant cells for further analysis down-stream, including sequencing—linking on-chip phenotype and function to off-chip genotype via unique chip and pen IDs.
In a recent study published in the journal Antibody Therapeutics, researchers at Twist Bioscience published on alpaca VHH antibody discovery on the Beacon® system, highlighting the flexibility of developing many different species on our single cell screening platform. Adoption of high-resolution screening assays during the early antibody discovery workflow allows rapid identification of valuable hits and can accelerate therapeutic antibody discovery. However, such approaches have not been widely implemented for single domain (e.g. VHH) antibody discovery, which is typically done using in vitro display approaches and subject to their limitations. For the first time, in this study, researchers have established a novel platform for function-forward VHH discovery directly from a natural camelid immune repertoire by pairing high-resolution Beacon® screening capabilities with a newly developed upstream workflow for alpaca B cell enrichment, stimulation and screening.
If you would like to learn more about the capabilities of the Beacon® system, and how our powerful platforms can advance and accelerate your understanding of cellular function across discovery, bioprocessing, clinical research, and immunotherapy development, get in touch with one of our experts.