Flow Cytometry
Unparalleled Cell Analysis
Flow cytometry, a critical enabling technology, has significantly advanced over the last 30 years, with the exception of cellular controls.
Enter the revolutionary technology behind Slingshot Biosciences.
Overview
Ideal cellular mimics for calibration and standardization to ensure performance for instruments and assays.
Flow cytometry can differentiate cells based on a variety of features including size, granularity, specific surface markers or internal proteins, and DNA composition or expression. The range of topics that can be studied using flow cytometry is wide and continues to grow as scientists continuously find new ways to apply this technology in both clinical studies and basic science. Fluorescence, compensation and cellular controls are the backbone of generating reliable flow cytometry data.
The breakthrough technology creates synthetic cells that match the optical, fluorescence and biochemical features of any cell type, even rare disease types. FlowCytes®—the backbone of our products—are a series of synthetic cells assembled in a 3-D spherical matrix, physically resembling a cell. FlowCytes are nearly indistinguishable between live cells when analyzed in a flow cytometer. This makes FlowCytes the ideal cell controls to calibrate, standardize and ensure performance for instruments and assays.
Shortcomings of Current Methods
In flow cytometry, controls have traditionally come from blood donations or solid-core plastic beads.
Current blood controls cannot be manufactured without using technology to combine human and animal cells or sourcing primary cells from active donors. Only <1% of blood diseases have available controls.
Biological Controls
- High cost
- Batch-to-batch variability
- Cell line maintenance
- Biohazardous shipping and handling
- Poor stability
Polystyrene solid-core beads
- Have high non-specific binding
- Do not mimic cell autofluorescence
- Fundamentally different properties from cells, including refractive index and FSC vs SSC
Advantages of Slingshot
The innovative technology from Slingshot Biosciences is designed to help researchers get customizable cellular controls quickly, without sourcing primary cells or generating cell banks.
Even the rarest of diseases can accurately be profiled with an off-of-the-shelf control product.
- Our manufacturing process effectively eliminates lot-to-lot variability and saves time and money in qualifying QC material.
- Our non-bio based synthetic controls are stable, sustainable, and precisely mimic cell attributes.
- Compensation controls designed for spectral flow analysis with cell-like autofluorescence for superior signal-to-noise performance.
- Our synthetic cells can be customized with biomarkers, in addition, to quantitatively modified with encapsulated nucleic acids.
Related Resources
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FlowCytes® WBC
SYNTHETIC CELLS THAT MIMIC THE OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF HUMAN BLOOD POPULATIONS FOR LYMPHOCYTES, MONOCYTES, AND GRANULOCYTES