Spend less time qualifying results, and more time getting results. Slingshot’s Flow Cytometry Synthetic Cell Controls make these goals achievable in your experiments. The revolutionary technology decreases cost, shortens development timelines and increases stability, impact and accessibility. This is 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:
Slingshot’s synthetic cells imitate real cells’ characteristics indistinguishably
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 cost, shortens development timelines and increases accessibility to cell controls. Our cutting-edge technology platform can be used in a range of applications including:
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 3D 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.
Synthetic Cells for high-precision calibration in flow cytometry
Complete Customization
Slingshot scientists can partner with you to customize our products to your needs, on demand. Our technology is built on proprietary predictive modeling, uniquely designed microsystems, and a manufacturing platform that precisely creates off-the-shelf solutions for cell-like reagents that are stable and cost effective, in just hours. We can quickly scale to bioprint custom FlowCytes® with extreme precision and high throughput while meeting high ISO 9001 quality standards.
Current methods vs. Slingshot
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
⊘ High non-specific binding ⊘ No mimicking of cell autofluorescence ⊘ Fundamentally different properties from cells, incl. RI and FSC vs SSC |
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.
Advantages of Slingshot technology
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A new standard for instrument calibration and traceability
Breakthrough cellular mimics that match the optical properties of cells. Sets a new standard for instrument calibration and traceability.
FlowCytes® are the ideal alternative to using cell controls. Instantly and easily mimic lymphocyte, monocyte, and granulocyte populations to calibrate instruments or to QC assays. Ensuring that instruments are at peak performance and consistent over time is critical to generating quality flow cytometry data. Slingshot’s technology uniquely solves this by combining ease of use, accuracy, and consistency to the complicated world of instrument calibration.
Our shelf-stable synthetic cells are produced with incredibly high precision which translates to minimal lot-to-lot variability and consistent precision. FlowCytes® are the ideal solution to ensure that the most advanced flow cytometers are always at peak performance.
Isolated PBMCs (left figure) – VS. – FlowCytes® PBMC mimics (right figure)
FlowCytes® synthetic white blood cells (WBC) are shelf stable synthetic cells that mimic the optical properties of human blood populations for unfixed lymphocytes, monocytes, and granulocytes. This product is intended as a forward and side scatter control for the identification and analysis of whole blood populations. The synthetic mimics can be used to measure flow cytometry instrument performance or as an assay control for traceability and standardization.
Features:
Synthetic fluorescence compensation controls designed for the modern spectral flow cytometry. SpectraComp® compensation controls are state-of-the-art synthetic cells that mimic the scatter profile of lymphocytes, captures multiple species of antibodies, and matches the spectral fluorescence of stained cells. This product is intended for spectral compensation to match the single staining of real cells. Staining with the capture beads yield a positive and a negative fluorescence peak that will aid in resolving the performance of the dyes and in compensating for spectral overlaps of dyes.
Optimize your spectral flow analysis
Fluorescence, compensation, and cellular controls are the backbone of generating reliable flow cytometry data. Polystyrene solid-core beads used for instrument and assay setup have high levels of non-specific binding, do not mimic cell autofluorescence, and have fundamentally different properties from cells, including FSC vs SSC. This leads to controls that do not match the spectral profile of single stained cells, under-or over-compensation calculations, and ultimately compromised accuracy of data.
SpectraComp® compensation controls from Slingshot Biosciences are synthetic cells that mimic the optical and autofluorescence profile of lymphocytes and capture multiple species of antibodies. Precise, reliable, and repeatable results – with SpectraComp®, these goals are now achievable in your spectral flow cytometry experiments.
Autofluorescence in Spectral Analysis. Autofluorescence across a full emission spectrum was evaluated for cells, SpectraComp® and competitor polystyrene-based compensation beads.
Features:
Convenient and reliable controls to measure cell health.
ViaComp® viability controls are advanced 2-in-1 beads that bind to both DNA intercalating dyes (7AAD, DAPI, PI) and amine-reactive viability dyes to simulate the viability staining of cells. This product is intended as compensation and assay controls to match the viability staining of real cells. The combination of positive and negative binding beads yields positive and negative fluorescence peaks that will aid in identifying the live and dead cell populations.
Viability staining is important both in experimental research and therapeutic applications of flow cytometry. Creating consistent, reliable cell viability controls is difficult, which becomes much harder when researchers have limited biospecimens. Currently, common viability control methods require researchers to kill a portion of their cells in an added step that is wasteful, time-consuming, and often still does not achieve the desired standard of control.
ViaComp® is a one-of-a-kind viability control containing conveniently pre-mixed live and dead synthetic cell mimics. ViaComp® dead cell mimics contain DNA, making this reagent a full process control for DNA-intercalating live/dead labeling. At the same time, the product works exceptionally well with a wide array of both DNA and primary amine dyes.
High DNA Binding. ViaComp® beads have encapsulated DNA which yield a high and specific signal to DNA intercalating dyes. Moreover, the mixed positive and negative beads result in clear separation of the peaks.
Features:
High performance synthetic cells with key biomarkers. Experience a new level of accuracy and reliability.
Flow cytometry, a critical enabling technology, has significantly advanced over the last 30 years, with the exception of cellular controls. 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. These biological controls have high cost, batch-to-batch variability, cell line maintenance, biohazardous shipping and handling, and poor stability.
TruCytes™ products:
On top of these, TruCytes™ can be customized to match rare diseases – a known bottleneck in development – and any hematological malignancy in record time.
TruCytes™ TBNK Synthetic Cellular Controls match the biochemical profile and optical properties of any target cell population, eliminating the drawbacks that traditionally come with using bio-based cellular controls.
Features:
Multicolor research instruments for your flow cytometry lab
Flow Cytometry NovoCyte InstrumentsSetting the benchmark for Flow Cytometry. Powerful – Broad range – Multiple Fluorophores
Antibodies for Flow Cytometry
Dr. Thorsten Rieling
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