S2 Genomics Awarded $280,000 Phase I STTR Grant From the National Institutes of Health
S2 Genomics, Inc. has received a $280,000 Phase I STTR grant (1 R41 HG010129-01) from the National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute to develop the Singulator™ system for automated preparation of single cells or single nuclei suspensions from solid tissue samples. The system will include single-use sample cartridges and proprietary reagents that allow researchers to isolate cells or nuclei rapidly, reproducibly, and with minimal impacts on the cellular transcriptome.
Genomics and cell biology experiments performed at the single-cell level are advancing our understanding of biological complexity for both healthy and diseased tissue, revealing, for example, new cell subtypes in normal tissue and heterogeneity within solid tumors. These insights will ultimately impact drug development and clinical applications of genomic information.
“Current methods of cell isolation represent a significant bottleneck for researchers and lead to inconsistencies in the data. The Singulator will standardize experimental workflows and optimize both the quantity and quality of viable cells or nuclei isolated from a variety of tissue types,” said Dr. Stevan Jovanovich, the Principal Investigator, founder and CEO of S2 Genomics. “This grant supports S2 Genomics’ mission of developing tools that enable the advancement of biology research at the single-cell level.”
The project, “Automated preparation of single-cells and nuclei from solid tissues,” is a collaboration with Co-PIs Roger Lasken, Ph.D., and Richard Scheuermann, Ph.D., of the non-profit J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). The Singulator will be optimized for use in single cell genomic DNA sequencing and RNA sequencing from single nuclei, methods that were first introduced by the Lasken lab in 2005 and 2013. The Scheuermann lab has developed methods to bioinformatically evaluate RNA sequencing from single cells and nuclei. The prototype system will be field tested at JCVI and other sites.
