Unleashing the Power of Microfluidic Picodroplets

On this interview conducted at SLAS EU 2023 in Brussels, Belgium, we spoke to Richard Hammond, Chief Technical Officer at Sphere Fluidics, about Sphere Fluidics’ microfluidic picodroplet technology and more. 

Please could you introduce yourself and Sphere Fluidics as an organization and your current role at Sphere Fluidics?

I’m Richard Hammond, and I’m the Chief Technical Officer at Sphere Fluidics. I joined the corporate six months ago, but before this, I worked in product development inside life sciences and healthcare for 25 years. I’m trained as an engineer, and I actually have been applying this across various technologies for a few years.

Sphere Fluidics was founded 13 years ago. The thought to take small water-in-oil droplets and use them for all times sciences research originally got here from the University of Cambridge. Sphere was arrange as the corporate to use and commercialize this, which has been successful.

At the top of last 12 months, you were appointed Chief Technical Officer at Sphere Fluidics. What did this appointment mean to you, and the way have the last 6 months been in your latest position?

On a private level, it is basically the buildup of a profession. I at all times desired to create great science and technology, and I learned that a part of that was having the ability to lead and encourage others and grow teams. I at all times thought attending to that level in the corporate can be strategy to make a difference.

The last six months have been extremely busy. We have now a implausible product, but there’s much work to do. We’d like to get the product on the market and proceed to work on its manufacture robustness and value to make sure it is sweet value for our users.

We at all times have to bring the subsequent idea, product, or application forward too. It’s an interesting balance between working on what we have already got and advancing our technology to where it must be.

Joining any organization involves learning concerning the culture, the people, the way in which things are done, in addition to the science, technology, and products. It has been busy, but great fun.

Here at SLAS EU 2023, Sphere Fluidics will share the newest updates in your microfluidic picodroplet technology. What is that this technology, and what are its applications?

The premise is making tiny droplets of water in oil. Each one in all these is basically a response chamber, a tiny test tube. You possibly can make lots of these in a short time, similar to one million response chambers, in a number of minutes. This provides a way of conducting big experiments quickly.

You possibly can put a cell contained in the droplet and interrogate it to know what the cell is doing, after which make decisions similar to whether to proceed with the cell or discard it if it will not be behaving as expected.

We will construct these rapid, automated systems for studying and making decisions about cells, which is a fundamental need inside many parts of life sciences. It also enables desired cells to be identified inside huge populations.

What are the newest developments regarding your microfluidic picodroplet technology, and the way do these developments influence using your technology?

One particular area is functional assays. Much of our work has concerned a single cell secreting or expressing a desired molecule. We at the moment are moving towards co-encapsulation, where as a substitute of getting a single cell, you deliberately put two different cells right into a droplet and observe the interactions.

This includes how the cells work together, communicate, and influence one another. For applications similar to cell therapy, which involves engineering a cell to affect one other cell, you may begin to review those interactions.

We’re also beginning to bring gene editing technologies into the droplets, which suggests the editing process takes place contained in the droplet. We have now been considering each transduction and transfection methods, which have yielded interesting results.

You possibly can put a cell in a droplet, make genetic changes to that cell, after which study the results and judge if it is helpful. This provides a brand new way of probably screening extensive libraries or performing genetic modifications on cells.

Your cutting-edge Cyto-Mine^® platform utilizes picodroplet technology. Tell us concerning the platform. How does this platform revolutionize workflows? What are its applications? What are its key benefits?

Cyto-Mine provides a way for others to utilize this droplet technology. The rationale we call these picodroplets is that they’re at picoliter volumes. The Cyto-Mine enables using picodroplets for applications similar to antibody discovery and cell line development.

Firstly, you input cells, and the platform encapsulates those cells with a single cell per droplet. It then incubates these cells to permit them to specific. For instance, whether it is an antibody, they’ll begin to specific the antibody.

The Cyto-Mine lasers and optics enable the commentary of fluorescent signals for sorting. They discover which cells are expressing and thus which to carry on to. After sorting these cells, it dispenses them back into the normal well plate format, which is incredibly useful for progressing to the subsequent step of the method.

Sphere Fluidics. We work small so you may think big.Play

The platform brings all these process parts into one box with a consumable cartridge. It provides the technology in a more usable, automated way, enabling hundreds of thousands of cells to be screened in a day with minimal effort from the user. It is usually cheaper than traditional methods because it uses a smaller volume of consumables similar to reagents.

Cyto-Mine allows users to conduct excellent science and product development and be confident within the outcomes.

At SLAS EU 2023, you’ll give a chat entitled “High-Throughput Cell Engineering in Microfluidic Picodroplets”. Could you tell us about what you spoke about, in addition to the importance of communicating through talks at conferences similar to SLAS EU?

The talk discusses several future applications of picodroplets with real data, in addition to our work to integrate mass spectrometry into droplets, which is each fun and technically difficult.

Conferences similar to SLAS EU are very vital. A major challenge of bringing any latest approaches or technologies to the market is communication – telling people it exists and getting them to know its capabilities.

It’s difficult to do that without these forums where you may meet people, spend a while explaining it to them, and be there for questions. This sort of event is an incredible strategy to drive the business forward and construct communication channels.

Following COVID, it’s great to be back meeting people in person. I find it extremely helpful because you may fully engage with others and learn so rather more in a shorter time.

Why is it so vital for SLAS EU to acknowledge the amount and quality of companies here in Europe?

I actually have done a whole lot of work each in Europe and the US. The US is an enormous market, and there generally is a belief that they’ve all of the technology and funding, but I don’t agree.

There may be a whole lot of high-quality life sciences work conducted in Europe, however it often doesn’t receive the identical attention, which is why I used to be pleased that we might be here in a European context talking about this since it is a crucial a part of Europe and its economy.

I’m very glad to be here and that Europe is playing a giant part on this and making significant contributions.

With partnerships being fundamental to accelerating scientific research, how vital are in-person conferences similar to SLAS in nurturing relationships between sectors, especially between academia and industry?

It is incredibly vital because creating latest technology and getting it out worldwide is about collaboration and partnership. Industry and academia have widely different goals; some may consider they’re in conflict.

We must recognize they’re different but bring them together to realize less-constrained pondering. Working together facilitates latest technology.

For instance, as biological systems are so complex, academic rigor and insight are required to know and advance them. Meanwhile, the industrial industry takes this out of the research laboratory and right into a usable context.

Sphere Fluidics has a whole lot of academic collaborations. We’d like the 2 different sets of skills to maneuver forward in a meaningful way, each commercially and scientifically.

What are you able to tell us concerning the way forward for Sphere Fluidics?

The corporate received a giant investment a couple of 12 months ago, and within the shorter term, we’re specializing in growing the business.

We have now sensible technology that clearly works, with a few of our customers achieving implausible results in addition to step changes of their capabilities. We’d like to construct on this by increasing the number of individuals working with us and getting people to make use of the products.

Sphere Fluidics at SLAS EU Europe 2023Play

Beyond this, the picodroplet technology has a whole lot of potential. Cyto-Mine focuses on antibodies and cell lines, but we wish to develop products for non-mammalian systems, yeasts, bacteria, and the entire growing world of business biotech and artificial biology.

Some cell types are more naturally comfortable within the picodroplet environment than others, so there’s much work to do, but you may see how the underlying technology might be applied to lots of these areas, which could also be research today, but in the approaching years they can be available on the market as latest products and capabilities.

About Richard Hammond

Richard has held quite a few senior positions chargeable for product and technology development. At Alere Inc., he led major cross-company R&D programs including the Alere i platform, the world’s first CLIA-waived point-of-care molecular infectious disease diagnostic device. Richard founded Cambridge Consultants’ Bioinnovation group, providing biotechnical consultancy services, and recently was VP of Technology at DNA Electronics developing sequence-based diagnostics. Richard has MA and MEng degrees from King’s College, University of Cambridge.