The_Scientist_-_December_2018

12.2018 | THE SCIENTIST 45

W

ith the maturation of big data, whole-genome

sequencing, and other expansive investigations,

it can sometimes feel like researchers have

traded in their microscopes for macroscopes.

But this year’s Top 10 Innovations competition tells a different

story: that of a single cell.

Many of the exciting laboratory tools that our independent

panel of judges (whose bios and comments on each of the Top

10 products you’ll find below) selected for this year’s winning

crop are geared toward prying open individual cells to access

the data contained in their DNA, RNA, and/or proteins. The

advantage of capturing these reams of biological information

on the level of a single cell is revealing the variety within tis-

sues not detectable in pooled samples. In cancer research, for

example, such analyses may allow scientists to more accurately

characterize tumor heterogeneity by sampling several thousand

rapidly dividing cells on an individual basis to see how they dif-

fer from one another.

Also making a strong showing on this year’s list are products

that enable and advance tried and true laboratory technologies,

such as mass spectrometry and CRISPR-based genome editing.

We at The Scientist are pleased to present the winners of our

2018 Top 10 Innovations competition, and we look forward to

seeing the discoveries that bloom from their adoption.

Sphere Fluidics Cyto-Mine

About five years ago, employees at Sphere

Fluidics asked 35 biopharmaceutical com-

panies if the UK-based biotech firm’s

single-cell analysis technology could be

of any use. The responses indicated that

there was a need, particularly among com-

panies working on antibodies and cell

lines. What evolved out of those conversa-

tions is the Cyto-Mine, a compact, bench-

top apparatus that takes the place of what

would ordinarily be accomplished by mul-

tiple instruments. “It’s essentially the

world’s first integrated device specifically

designed to automatically perform all the

steps in antibody discovery and cell line

development workflows,” says Rob March-

mont, the sales and marketing director at

Sphere Fluidics, which began selling the

instrument this summer.

The Cyto-Mine screens a sample of up

to 200,000 cells by sorting them individually

into their own tiny droplets, assessing them for

the desired property (such as high production

of a particular protein or antigen specificity),

then dispensing the good ones onto microtiter

plates, from which users can grow clones.

Tom Kelly, a scientist at pharmaceutical

company Janssen, was an early tester of Cy-

to-Mine and now uses the finalized version

(priced at $450,000) for selecting cell lines

that produce large quantities of a biologic

drug. He says the biggest advantage is the

proof of clonality Cyto-Mine delivers, con-

firming that there’s just a single, verified cell

in each well. His previous protocol included

an extra step that doubled the processing

time. “The time it takes to go from transfec-

tion to freezing vials in the old process would

have been three months,” he says, “and now

it’s six weeks.”

KOEHLER: “We often struggle to find a single,

integrated platform that enables both screening and

cell recovery for downstream analysis. Full automa-

tion and a system focused on gentle manipulation

will increase the fidelity of experiments.”