LevitasBio announces new approaches to sample preparation and cell enrichment

LevitasBio has announced the expansion of its product portfolio with the release of two new product lines that will enable researchers and laboratory personnel to better process and characterize human, animal, and plant samples. As is widely understood, optimal cellular-based research results will typically depend upon the purity and viability of cells harvested from complex samples following a series of disconnected, time-consuming, and potentially harsh processing and characterization steps. High-value downstream analyses like single-cell sequencing or cellular expansion-based workflows like cell line development rely on gentle handling that minimizes cell perturbation and maintains the native biology being studied. These new LevitasBio products will expand upon the novel enrichment capabilities of the company's existing LeviCell platform to further integrate and optimize tissue dissociation and sample purification steps for even the most challenging sample types while maintaining maximum viability and cell health.

Optimized Tissue Dissociation Reagents

Processing tissue samples, such as resections and biopsies, is the most vital step in sample preparation, but it is often the most technically challenging. Since researchers aim to understand natural biological processes, it is critical to maintaining native cell populations from the original sample - free from disruption, perturbation, or capture bias – while ensuring the enrichment of target cells. LevitasBio's new tissue dissociation kits are specifically optimized for existing LeviCell workflows, allowing for gentler end-to-end handling across a broad range of human and model tissue types including tumor, heart, liver, lung, kidney, and brain. The kits will enable customers to obtain high viability suspended cell enrichment while minimizing cell stress, damage, or population bias.

Target Depletion Assays

While enhanced cell viability is commonly an important focus for cellular processing, researchers often also require the removal of specific cell types, extracellular matrices, or molecular backgrounds that can otherwise confound downstream results. Examples may include removal of immune cells from dissociated tumor biopsies, myelin from the dissociated brain, red blood cells from unperfused liver, or free extra-cellular RNA background from any single cell analysis preparation. LevitasBio's new depletion assays remove specific, selectable background targets from the sample during the LeviCell enrichment, enabling viable cell enrichment, debris removal, and targeted background depletion in a single step. This complete workflow is an industry-changing approach to targeted sample enrichment, putting sample purity solidly in the hands of the researcher.

"Our aim is to empower our customers to discover what is currently hidden in their samples," says Martin Piepryzk, CEO of LevitasBio, "By enabling researchers to gain access to specifically enriched viable cells from difficult starting samples while simultaneously characterizing the sample, we are opening the door to previously inaccessible discoveries."

"For us, next-generation sample enrichment already provided by our LeviCell platform is just the beginning," adds Paul Steinberg, CCO of LevitasBio, "We will continue to expand the capabilities around the LeviCell platform to integrate and optimize currently disparate sample processing and characterization workflows."

Early access to the new products is already being provided to select customers and will be available commercially in the first half of 2022.

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