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Bio-Techne, Akoya End Partnership to Develop Automated Spatial Biology Workflow

NEW YORK – Bio-Techne announced on Monday that it will end its collaboration with Akoya Biosciences to develop an automated workflow for its RNAscope tests with Akoya's PhenoCycler-Fusion System.

The companies first announced the partnership in 2022, saying they intended to develop and comarket protocols to enable automated workflows for running Bio-Techne's RNAscope assays on Akoya's spatial phenotyping systems. The decision to end the partnership "was made following best efforts to achieve the intended program goals," the company said in a statement. 

Minneapolis-based Bio-Techne will continue to support customers using its RNAscope assays with Opal reagents and PhenoImager HT systems purchased from Akoya, it said.

"We are actively expanding the capabilities of our gold-standard RNAscope technology to enable greater utility in multiomic spatial applications and plan to accelerate the development and commercialization of the first fully automated and scalable spatial multiomics workflow on the Lunaphore COMET system," Kim Kelderman, president of Bio-Techne's diagnostics and genomics segment, said in a statement. 

Bio-Techne acquired Swiss spatial biology firm Lunaphore earlier this year.

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