Built to behave like a cell.Not a bead. Not a donor. Not an animal.
A polystyrene bead is to a cell what a tennis ball is to a tomato. Wrong refractive index, wrong scatter profile, wrong surface. Donor cells are reproducible for about a week before the donor goes home. We built a synthetic particle that, in the flow cytometer, behaves like a cell and keeps behaving that way for up to three years, same lot.
Slingshot’s Approach
Through the combination of biochemistry, high-precision manufacturing and polymer chemistry, we create synthetic cells that are aptly named FlowCytes®. These shelf-stable, synthetic cells can be custom printed on demand and at large scale with incredible precision.
Slingshot’s revolutionary technology decreases cost, shortens development timelines, and opens new technical possibilities for innovators and scientists in their work. This unlocks a new paradigm for drug development, diagnostics and cell therapy—one without limitations.
Spend less time and resources developing cell reference materials and QC standards and more time:
- Advancing translational research
- Achieving unparalleled cell analysis and biomarker quantitation
- Streamlining QC processes for cell therapies to get them to patients faster
Technology at a Glance
The most advanced and ideal cell control
Through the intersection of biochemistry, polymer chemistry and high-precision manufacturing, we have created FlowCytes—synthetic cells that are indistinguishable from real cells. The Slingshot platform is the world's first on demand, synthetic cell design platform to address the industry's reliance on and limitations around biologically-derived cellular controls.
This breakthrough technology creates synthetic cells that match the optical, fluorescence and biochemical features of any cell type—even rare disease types. The result is the ideal cell control, achieved without sacrificing performance or consistency.
FlowCytes are shelf stable and can be custom printed on-demand, at scale, in real time. Slingshot's technology decreases costs, shortens development timelines and increases accessibility to cell controls. Our cutting-edge technology platform can be used in a range of applications including:
Engineer custom controls for biomarker assays, immune monitoring, and novel endpoints. Slingshot's mimics standardize assays from translational research through pivotal trials, reduce operator variability, and enable clean transfers between research and GLP/GCP environments.
Complete Customization
Slingshot scientists can partner with you to customize our products to fit your needs—on demand.
Our technology is built on proprietary microsystems and a manufacturing platform that precisely creates stable and cost-effective cell-like reagents in a matter of weeks.
We can quickly scale to cell print custom FlowCytes with reliable precision and high throughput while meeting ISO 9001 quality standards.
Where Synthetic Cells Replace the Real Thing
From research benches to clinical manufacturing floors, our cell mimics step in wherever real cells fall short, delivering the precision, stability, and scale that biology alone can't match.
Advanced Cell Therapies
Our synthetic cells are customizable and can replace real cells in many applications in advanced cell therapy development and manufacturing.
We save you the time, expense, and headaches of sourcing, altering, and maintaining your cell lines or bio-based controls.
Built for Every Cell-Based Workflow
Flow Cytometry
FlowCytes are semi-transparent and granular, like real cells, which makes them the ideal cell controls to calibrate, standardize and ensure performance for instruments and assays. We have a comprehensive product line to support instrument standardization, compensation and spectral unmixing, and analytical controls.
Assay Controls
Our standard and custom controls are the ideal drop-in solutions that work seamlessly with your current workflows. From fluorescence to biomarkers to other bioanalytical testing, the Slingshot platform can bring a newfound measure of assay control to your application.
Standard Phenotypes
Our biomarker controls are engineered with key surface antigen epitopes for standard immunophenotyping assays. We can precisely tune a collection of biomarkers (such as lymphocyte subsets and stem cell controls) and quantitatively modulate the antigen density.
Rare Diseases
TruCytes can be customized to match rare diseases–a known bottleneck in development. In record time, we can precisely match TruCytes to any hematologic malignancy such as AML and CLL—no matter how rare.