NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Labcyte and Notable Labs said today that they have inked an agreement under which Notable Labs will use Labcyte's Echo acoustic liquid handling technology for personalizing drug therapy.
Notable, a clinical oncology company, will employ the Echo technology in its fully automated, high-throughput laboratory to functionally assess the effects of FDA-approved drugs on live primary cancer cells from individual patients, the companies said.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Labcyte's acoustic liquid handling platform uses sound energy to transfer samples and reagents. The technology is also contactless, eliminating the use of pipettes and reducing the volumes required for compounds and samples, the company said.
Using Echo, Notable plans to test various chemotherapies, targeted agents, and other classes of drugs not traditionally used in oncology — either alone and in combination — to try to find novel applications that are effective against a particular patient's tumor cells.
"Our belief is that testing drugs directly on patients' cancer cells will lead to a better understanding of biological mechanisms of disease, improve treatment success, and reduce unnecessary side effects," Notable Labs Co-founder Pete Quinzio said in a statement
In addition to the Labcyte technology, Notable also adopted Intellicyt's iQue Screener Plus platform earlier this year as part of its therapy personalization goals.