Single-cell companies Mission Bio and Celsee Inc. at American Association for Cancer Research 2019 #AACR19

Mission Bio's Tapestri system

Mission Bio’s single-cell targeted DNA enrichment by multiplex PCR shows additional capabilities they are developing, and Celsee’s CTC enrichment also claims sc-RNA-Seq and sci-ATAC-seq potential In 2015 at the AACR conference in Philadelphia PA I noticed a poster that looked eerily familiar – the formation of water-in-oil droplets (“emulsions”) via a microfluidic device, reminiscent of … Read more

Akoya Biosciences and Berkeley Lights debut at American Association for Cancer Research 2019 #AACR19

Akoya Biosciences offers 50+ protein markers along with existing Phenoptics offering, while Berkeley Lights has a unique single-cell, live-cell analysis platform Every year the American Association for Cancer Research conference is a major conference for major product announcements and new companies to test the cancer research market. And while walking around the exhibit floor, you … Read more

The age of mRNA isoform discovery at #AGBT19

Single-cell isoforms from long-reads take the stage at the Advances for Genome Biology and Technology, along with structural variation and better reference genomes. Underlying all these advances is better long-read technology from Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore. Thinking a little further about the overarching theme of this year’s Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference … Read more

The early days of spatial genomics at #AGBT19

Illustration of Nanostring's GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiling technology

At #AGBT19 there is a palpable movement from dissociated single cells to single cells in situ Every year at the Advances of Genome Biology and Technology you can see what the future holds. When long-read sequencing was introduced in 2011, people here at AGBT19 are still talking about that Pacific Biosciences fireworks display on the … Read more

Highlights from the #AGBT18 Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Orlando Florida

I have had the privilege of attending this conference every year (except for one) for over 10 years, and this year has a few memorable experiences, presentations, conversations and introductions. Companies come and go; the mix of attendees is of course different every year; and I’ve had enough change in my own professional affiliation that … Read more

The Fluidigm C1™ Single Cell Auto Prep System

The Fluidigm C1 single cell microfluidic chamber showing a capture
The Fluidigm C1 IFC chip, borrowed from Fluidigm’s Spec Sheet

Every human being came from a single cell. While that fact may not be so obvious in our day-to-day routine, the power of a single cell is observed with the burst of research activity in stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (and also see the Nobel Prize winner for 2012 in Physiology or Medicine, Shinya Yamanaka, who discovered the reprogramming process). In cancer research, the concept of cancer stem cells has developed into a major effort into identifying and characterizing circulating tumor cells (“CTC’s”) by which metastatses occurs. This was a major topic of discussion at the Spring 2013 AACR meeting in Washington DC, as well as a recent Next Generation Dx meeting (also in Washington DC). In many other areas of human disease biology, the inherently heterogeneous nature of tissues in general point to the need to analyze biology at a much finer resolution.

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