Vision

High content cell-based data to ensure better drug lead discovery, shorter development timelines, and reduces downstream failure costs.

Application

Semarion is putting functional maturation and screening of biological drug libraries, such as antibodies, at the forefront of the drug development cycle. This allows for the development of agonists, antagonists, or modulators for high-value but elusive disease-relevant cell surface receptors such as GPCRs and Tyrosine Kinases.

Currently, antibody drug development suffers from an “affinity bias” because drug candidates are developed and selected against recombinant, isolated proteins. Not only is protein isolation not always possible (e.g. GPCRs), it also leads to the development of high-affinity binders that do not necessarily bind to the correct epitope on the target protein and thus do not trigger conformation changes or induce cell signaling pathway activation, inhibition, or modulation.

Technology

As a spin-out of Cambridge University, Semarion developed its 2D-Beads platform by leveraging on microprocessor technology. These highly tailored and highly functional microparticles overcome major limitation faced by competing microbeads.

Feature of the 2D-Beads:

(1) Effectively Flat - ideal for adherened cells
(2) Optical Barcode - enables multiplexed cells screens
(3) Fast Functionalisation - anti-fouling and active layers
(4) Enhanced Fluorescence - sensitive assays
(5) Ferromagnetic - sorting and 3D orientation

Semarion’s novel 2D-Beads are carriers for 1-5 live cells each. The beads are uniquely barcoded for the cell type that they are carrying. This allows Semarion to pool different cell types - including primary cells and reporter lines - to perform multiplexed cell-based assays on large antibody libraries. Fluorescent signals readouts inform on antibody binding, cell signal pathway activation, and protein up/down-regulation, among other hallmarks.

TEAM