Labcyte and FIMM Extend Personalized Medicine Collaboration

Labcyte Inc. and the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), a unit of the Helsinki Institute of Life Science at the University of Helsinki today announced they are extending their personalized medicine collaboration to include multiple new applications that leverage the unique capabilities of Labcyte’s Echo^® liquid handler and Access™ automation platform. The organizations first began collaborating in 2013 to develop new personalized medicine strategies to treat cancer based on functional cell screening.

At FIMM, scientists have developed an innovative approach to cancer care that first involves testing the effects of hundreds of different drug options on the patient’s cancer cells in the lab, a process that is uniquely enabled by Labcyte’s acoustic liquid handling technology. Combined with the patient’s DNA data, this information can help doctors create a tailored treatment plan in real time.

The collaboration has been expanded to include cell-based assay development and screening, such as lysate-based assays for multiplexing and standard miniaturized assays; the development of advanced cell models, such as spheroid/organoid assays, cellulose matrix for 3D cell culture, and flow cytometry assays; and integration of the Echo liquid handler in FIMM’s genomics program to include single cell genomics and population genetics workflows.

“The collaboration with FIMM has been one of our most successful and productive to date,” said Mark Fischer-Colbrie, Chief Executive Officer at Labcyte. “We have been working together for the past four years to break new ground in personalized medicine and functional cell screening, and this work is being modeled now in many centers around the world. The team at FIMM have enabled patients to achieve remission and identified drugs and drug combinations that can be used more broadly. We are looking forward to working on these new projects.”

“FIMM’s Individualized Systems Medicine in Cancer program has greatly benefited from Labcyte’s acoustic liquid handling technology,” said Janna Saarela, Research Director at FIMM and the Head of the FIMM Technology Centre. “Our collaboration has been essential for the successful drug sensitivity testing assays we have set up. Now we aim to expand the use of Labcyte’s equipment to our genomic workflows, enabling us to miniaturize assays, make complex liquid handling processes simple, and explore the use of acoustic liquid handling for biobanked DNA samples.”

For more information, please visit http://www.labcyte.com/applications/personalized-medicine

About Labcyte Inc.

Labcyte, a global biotechnology tools company headquartered in San Jose, California, is revolutionizing liquid handling. Echo^® liquid handling systems uses sound to precisely transfer liquids without contact, eliminating the use of pipettes. Labcyte instruments are used worldwide throughout the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, as well as by hospitals, service laboratories, contract research organizations, and academic institutions. Our customers work across a wide spectrum of scientific research, including drug discovery, genomics, proteomics, diagnostics and personalized medicine. Labcyte has 61 U.S. patents and others internationally. For more information, visit www.labcyte.com.

About FIMM

Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) is an international research institute in Helsinki focusing on human genomics and personalized medicine. In the beginning of 2017 FIMM joined the University of Helsinki’s new life science research center, Helsinki Institute of Life Science HiLIFE, as an operational unit. FIMM integrates molecular medicine research, technology center and biobanking infrastructures under one roof, promoting translational research in grand challenge projects, specifically, the impact of genome information from the Finnish population in personalized health and medicine, individualized cancer medicine, and digital diagnostics for precision medicine. FIMM is part of the Nordic EMBL Partnership in Molecular Medicine and the EU-LIFE alliance. For more information, visit www.fimm.fi/en/.

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Contact information

Bioscribe, Inc. for Labcyte
Nicole Litchfield, 415-793-6468
nicole@bioscribe.com
or
Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM)
HiLIFE, University of Helsinki
Mari Kaunisto
mari.kaunisto@helsinki.fi