SYNENTEC
Your Partner for Automated High-Throughput Biological Imaging

It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought an unprecedented impact on economies and industries worldwide. Within the pharmaceutical space alone, the novel coronavirus has completely reshaped the cell line development (CLD) and biopharmaceutical processes. For many, the repercussions of the pandemic have forced both smaller and large pharma companies to make tough decisions apropos of the ongoing biologic drug development programs. Alongside this, the ongoing documentation challenges for regulatory approval of vaccines or clonality in the area of CLD and biologics have also added to the issue.
Against such a challenging backdrop, how can drug developers ensure robust yet cost-effective processes and increase the feasibility of cell culture projects in times of crisis?

This calls for a partner who can assess the needs of its clients and optimise an organisation’s protocol to solve their individual cell culture challenges, such as demonstrating monoclonality for regulatory approval in the area of CLD and biologics. And their search often ends with CELLAVISTA® and NYONE®—automated cell culture microscopes developed by SYNENTEC to help answer individual cell culture queries at every step of vaccine research, development, and production process.

Although CELLAVISTA and NYONE can function as a stand-alone solution, they can also be integrated into large automated platforms. Often, proof-of-principles are performed with the NYONE at medium throughput, and the subsequent high-throughput experiments are automated using CELLAVISTA. Here, the uncomplicated transfer from one device to another offers a major advantage—which saves time and effort while streamlining the entire workflow.

“Our devices are designed for high-throughput. Our excellent image resolution, precise image processing, and our control mechanisms within the software leave no questions unanswered,” says Stefan Hummel, founder and CEO of SYNENTEC. Moreover, the company’s solutions cover an extensive range of applications with 65 different analysis tools, which offers them a great advantage to solve almost any biological problem.

But how exactly can CELLAVISTA and NYONE accelerate various areas of virological research and vaccine development?

It is well known that vaccine development workflows vary depending on the platform chosen (e.g. inactivated virus vs. RNA vaccine) and each has its own advantages. And, in all the steps of screening, SYNENTEC’s imaging platforms support the laboratory work.

Our devices are designed for high-throughput. Our excellent image resolution, precise image processing, and our control mechanisms within the software leave no questions unanswered

It can either be the high-throughput screening for binding to virus-specific antibodies, immunogen engineering by CRISPR/Cas9, testing of the vaccine vector for transduction efficiency, SCC with verification of clonality, its subsequent growth control of the clones and determination of the high producers by titer assay, or final screening of the generated antigens by virus neutralisation tests to assess the efficacy of a vaccine. Thus, it brings the advantage of performing almost the entire screening workflow in vaccine development with only one device—reflecting a much more streamlined and faster workflow.

What’s more interesting is the underlying YT-image analysis software—the bedrock of both CELLAVISTA and NYONE solutions—for the storage, handling and processing of imaging data for documentation and presentation purposes. While CELLAVISTA and NYONE is used for data generation, YT-Software is used for analysing specific properties in cells or cell features, and the results are visualised using overlays in the software. Moreover, YT-Software is easy to handle and offers many possibilities for individual settings where necessary. “Our customers appreciate the extraordinarily precise and highly sensitive image cytometry of YT-Software as well as the use of automatable templates that increase reproducibility and eliminate human error. Above all, new functions and image processing operators are always made available to our customers free-of-charge,” states Hummel.

While several factors are consistently playing a significant role in SYNENTEC’s continued success, the firm’s core values and the team’s work culture has always enabled them to rise above others. Today, many customers in the CLD area are riding the coattails of SYNENTEC’s holistic offerings to get their workload under control or help in the field antibody detection, where SYNENTEC’s sensitivity has enabled its customers to run their assays at the desired throughput.

The company seeks to further strengthen its position by enhancing its offerings and making them more robust. To that end, the future of SYNENTEC can be characterised by capacity expansions. “We are currently close to the limits of our production capabilities and need to take the necessary action. And, geographically, are well-positioned in the U.S., Asia, and Europe for years,” mentions Hummel. More importantly, the present times have substantiated the company’s wide range of applications and earned them the position of being called ‘crisis-proof,’ and “we wish to continue this way for helping pharma companies for not only immunology but also drug screening, high-content screening, and cell line development,” concludes Hummel.