Scipio bioscience announces single-cell RNA-seq kit

Published: 3-May-2022

The kit, along with its companion analysis software, are now commercially available for researchers

Scipio bioscience has made its latest single-cell RNA-sequencing kit, Asteria, commercially available for any researcher worldwide. The hydrogel-based benchtop kit reportedly enables the transcriptomic profiling of 10,000 individual cells per sample, instrument-free.

With the kit, researchers also gain access to its cloud-based analysis software, Cytonaut. The combination of the kit and software is accessible to any scientist with or without prior knowledge of single-cell technology and bioinformatics, Scipio claims.

Using Asteria, a researcher can process fresh samples of 10,000 cells with a stable stopping point within two hours, simplifying sample management at the laboratory and limiting transcriptional changes. The hydrogel technology bypasses the use of microfluidics and nano-wells, enabling the generation of barcoded cDNA on the workbench, independently from the studied cell types.

End-to-end software for pre- and post-processing analysis is provided through the Cytonaut platform, which also offers interactive data visualisation and generation of publication-ready results and figures. Hosted in a secure cloud infrastructure, it guides the user through the analysis step by step, allowing researchers to exploit their data without requiring knowledge in bioinformatics.

“We are achieving our goal of bringing a single-cell solution to every lab”, says Pierre Walrafen, CEO at Scipio bioscience, “empowering researchers to use single-cell sequencing unhindered by the technical, logistical and cost limitations of current solutions. With the Asteria kit ready in the freezer for on-the-spot profiling and cloud-based Cytonaut accessible from any computer for immediate bioinformatic analysis, anyone can start generating high-quality single-cell data on their own terms.”

“When investigating the impact of radiotherapy on lung tissue, it is essential that we analyse our samples immediately to measure a transcriptomic profile as close to physiological conditions as possible”, said Dr Charles Fouillade from the Repair, Radiation and Innovative Anticancer Therapies team led by Prof Arturo Londoño at Curie Institute, Paris, France. “And thanks to the Asteria kit protocol, we can quickly capture the mRNAs and resume the experiment the next day without loss of gene expression."

The single-cell RNA-seq kit will be distributed by Witec in Switzerland, BioCat in Austria and Germany, Ozyme in France, and Thistle Scientific in the UK and Ireland. For any other countries, orders will be handled via Scipio itself.

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