NEW YORK – Single-cell sequencing technology company Singleron Biotechnologies said it is "rapidly" expanding its global operations while developing products aimed at high-throughput and clinical applications.
The company, currently based in Germany and China, said it has been building out a commercial team in the US since last year and plans to establish its presence in the Middle East this year.
"We are expanding our global footprint," said Singleron CEO and Cofounder Nan Fang.
According to Fang, Singleron's current operational headquarters is located in Cologne, Germany, though the company also has "a very large operation" in China, where about 400 of its approximately 500 total employees are located. In addition, the company also has a local business team in Singapore to serve the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
Currently, Singleron manufactures its instruments both in China and Europe, while its reagent kits are produced in China, Germany, and Michigan. "We consider ourselves to be a global company, which is also quite important in the current geopolitical situation," Fang said.
In late January, Singleron launched Tensor, a single-cell automation platform that enables end-to-end sample prep workflows from cell suspensions to sequencing-ready libraries.
"In recent years, we start[ed] to see that there is a need for people to take on larger and larger single cell-sequencing projects, especially with the reduced sequencing cost," Fang said, adding that these customers "want to run more samples … in a more automated way."
Previously, Singleron launched the Matrix Neo platform for automated chip priming, single-cell partitioning, lysis, and barcoded RNA capturing using the company's proprietary Scope-chip, a microwell-based single-cell partitioning microfluidics system. Tensor expands the capability of Matrix by also enabling automated library generation downstream, Fang said.
In addition, Tensor has higher throughput than Matrix, accommodating 16 Scope-chips per run versus four for the Matrix. With sample barcoding on the Tensor, researchers can run up to 16 samples on each chip or 256 in total.
The Scope-chips come in two versions: SD, which can capture up to 20,000 cells, or HD, which can capture about 30,000 cells.
To use Tensor, customers load cell suspension, regents, and the Scope-chips onto the platform, which is roughly the size of "a big fish aquarium," said Julia Peisert, Singleron's product manager.
The platform can process between two to 16 chips per run, Peisert said, adding that when running the maximum number of chips in parallel, the turnaround time is about nine hours.
According to Fang, the list price for Tensor is around $320,000. She also noted that the company is willing to work with customers to integrate Singleron's Scope-chip carrier — a component of Tensor — with their existing liquid handling instrument in order to achieve the same function without having to purchase a new platform.
With a higher throughput, Tensor is targeted for customers that include researchers involved with large single-cell studies, core facilities, and pharma companies, as well as contract research organizations.
Fang said the company also developed the platform with clinical applications in mind. "Singleron was founded on the belief that single-cell technology would one day help people to achieve better precision medicine and also get better health," Fang said. "This kind of automation would really help the clinical labs to automate everything and standardize everything."
To that end, Fang said the company is interested in obtaining regulatory approval for Tensor for clinical use, though she said that "will certainly take some time."
Additionally, Fang said the company is working with several undisclosed partners to develop single-cell technology-based assays with "quite clear clinical indications." The company has also partnered with a number of undisclosed European biotech and pharmaceutical companies to support single-cell sequencing for their clinical trials. Furthermore, Fang said the company is the single-cell sequencing partner for the Cellular Immunotherapy Virtual Twin for Personalised Cancer Treatment consortium, a project funded by the EU that aims to leverage single-cell multiomics data to build virtual twin for the treatment of blood cancer patients.
Over the years, Singleron has also accumulated a large amount of single-cell data and is developing AI tools to potentially generate insights for drug development and clinical applications, she added.
Singleron's global expansion comes at a time when single-cell research tool companies, such as 10x Genomics, Scale Biosciences, and Parse Biosciences, are increasingly touting better multiplexing, throughput, and multiomics capabilities for their technologies.
According to Fang, multiomics has also been a priority for Singleron. "Definitely one area that we will continue to work on is to generate more multiomics products," she said. "If people have one sample, it will be very beneficial for them to detect as many different analytes as possible."