Berkeley Lights Launches T Cell Receptor Sequencing Kit to Increase Efficiency of T Cell Receptor Discovery

Friday 06 March 2020 10:19
The T Cell Receptor Sequencing Kit (TCRseq Kit) allows users of Berkeley Lights platforms to more efficiently identify, recover, and sequence T cells of interest

Today, Berkeley Lights, a leader in cell selection, launched their new T Cell Receptor Sequencing Kit (TCRseq Kit). The TCRseq Kit enables users of Berkeley Lights' Beacon and Lightning instruments to recover functionally validated T cell receptors (TCRs) from a cell sample that has as few as 10,000 input cells. The TCRseq Kit enables Berkeley Lights platform users to first characterize the T cell function using the Berkeley Lights Cell Therapy Development Suite and then only sequence the T cells that matter. This therefore functionally replaces existing methodologies that require re-expressing hundreds of TCRs in the hopes of identifying the rare sequence that imparts an ideal specificity.

"We're excited to announce the launch of the TCRseq Kit, an advanced tool that enables recovery of alpha/beta chain sequences specific TCRs from single cells and increases TCR recovery to over 70%," said John Proctor, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Marketing at Berkeley Lights. "We are building a Cell Therapy Development Suite of tools to help our customers better characterize T cells with the Beacon and Lightning instruments."

After performing a T cell functional assay on the Beacon or Lightning instrument, the user selects single human T cells of interest and exports them from the company's OptoSelect chip to a well plate. Using reagents provided in the TCRseq Kit, RNA from single T cells is recovered and V(D)J regions of the TCR alpha and beta chains are amplified. The resulting cDNA is ready for the user to index and sequence using sequencing platforms. The TCRseq Kit includes reagents and protocols for processing up to 192 single human T cells.

The TCRseq Kit is available for purchase now. You can find more information here: https://www.berkeleylights.com/applications/t-cell-functional-analytics

About Berkeley Lights

Here at Berkeley Lights, we think cells are awesome! Cells are capable of manufacturing cures for diseases, fibers for clothing, energy in the form of biofuels, and food proteins for nutrition. So the question is, if nature is capable of manufacturing the products we need in a scalable way, why aren't we doing more of this? Well, the answer is that with the solutions available today, it is hard. It takes a long time to find the right cell for a specific job, costs lots of money, and if you have picked a suboptimal cell line, has a very low process yield. Berkeley Lights has the complete solution to find the best cells by functionally screening and recovering individual cells for antibody discovery, cell line development, T cell analysis, and synthetic biology. Our proprietary technology and Beacon(R) and Lightning(TM) platforms accelerate the rate you can discover and develop cell-based products in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of conventional, legacy research methods. Using our tools and solutions, scientists can find the best cells, the first time they look. For more information, visit www.berkeleylights.com.

Berkeley Lights' Beacon and Lightning instruments and the TCRseq Kit are: For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

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