US healthcare heavyweights help launch Lightcast SAB

The new recruits will help inform its scientific research and product development strategies as Lightcast prepares for full commercial launch. Lightcast is advancing single-cell functional analysis with a droplet-based platform that can load, select, process, and analyse up to tens to hundreds of thousands of individual cells at the same time and then recover live cells off the platform.

The inaugural members of Lightcast’s SAB are David H. Raulet – Esther and Wendy Schekman Chair in Basic Cancer Biology and Distinguished Professor of Immunology and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, Berkeley – and Max Jan, an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Assistant Pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Lightcast says its novel technology enables the manipulation of addressable picoliter droplets with light in a massively parallel manner, enabling sequential assays querying individual cell function and cell-cell interactions.

Lightcast’s platform provides the flexibility to analyse a wide range of cell types and assays, as well as the precision to meticulously control and monitor the number, occupancy, location, and movement of each droplet. The approach will streamline workflows for drug discovery and development, and promote translational and basic research advancements.

“Lightcast is at a critical inflection point in our ongoing quest to redefine and apply single-cell functional analysis,” said CEO Paul Loeffen.

“Cellular immunology is a key application for our platform and the insights and recommendations of our distinguished SAB members will help us overcome current industry challenges and address key limitations in existing approaches.

“Together, we will look to drive the widespread adoption of our innovative technology across a broad range of disciplines, from basic and translational research to drug discovery.”

Dr Raulet’s laboratory investigates mechanisms of recognition of cancer cells and infected cells by natural killer (NK) cells and T cells. His team has employed its understanding of NK recognition, activation and inhibition to establish therapeutic combinations that super-activate NK cells, while at the same time preventing desensitisation and inhibition of the cells. These combinations have shown promise as new therapies for cancers that are refractory to existing immunotherapies.

Dr Raulet said: “Lightcast’s technology is the first to enable interrogations of individual cells in such complex and choreographed ways, allowing us to move beyond current functional methods that make it difficult to attribute effects to specific cells.

“I am looking forward to participating in the SAB and to helping drive the future of this new platform, which I believe could support a new wave of more effective immunotherapies.”

Max Jan’s laboratory primarily focuses on the development of clinically suitable synthetic biology platforms to advance next-generation cellular immunotherapies. His team uses a combination of genomics, synthetic biology, and biochemistry to build new technologies, explore design principles for adaptive, user-controllable immune cells, and investigate clinical settings to deploy smart cell therapies.

Lightcast recently announced the opening of its Innovation Centre in Boston, Mass., to support the global expansion of its Luminary Early Access Program. This initiative enables royalty-free, pre-commercial technology access to collaborators and is designed to showcase the full utility of the technology in important drug development and translational research.

Lightcast continues to seek collaborative partners interested in being among the first to evaluate and apply the unprecedented flexibility and scalability of its droplet-based technology. To set up a platform demonstration or to learn more about the Luminary EAP, visit www.lightcast.bio/luminary-program.

Paul Steinberg, CCO at Lightcast, commented: “In the second half of 2023, we launched the Luminary Early Access Program to engage with leading experts in translational research and drug development, enabling us to collaboratively refine and enhance our respective technologies and workflows.

“We now have a growing number of European and North American laboratories participating, and today I am delighted to announce the expansion of the Luminary EAP to ensure we prioritise the development of applications that promise the highest impact on scientific advancement and therapeutic development.”

Founded in 2019, Lightcast has invented a technology that uses rays of light to control picoliter-scale droplets for functional analysis of individual cells.