NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Berkeley Lights announced today that it has signed an agreement to help Pfizer improve its monoclonal antibody discovery and gene editing workflows.
Under the terms of the deal, the companies will combine Berkeley Lights' Beacon technology — a light-based nanofluidics platform for single-cell selection, characterization, culture, and export — with Pfizer's expertise in gene editing, sequencing, molecular biology, and B-cell screening. The collaboration is expected to help streamline Pfizer's workflows, and also advance development of the Beacon platform.
"We see potential in leveraging the Beacon platform to help accelerate and access greater diversity for our drug development processes," Will Somers, vice president of biomedicine design at Pfizer, said in a statement. "This program enables a thorough evaluation of multiple areas within our development process to further optimize plasma B-cell and gene editing workflows."
Berkeley Lights has formed collaborations for its Beacon technology with a number of pharmaceutical firms recently, including Teva Pharmaceuticals Australia, Daiichi Sankyo, Bayer AG, and GlaxoSmithKline.