ExcellGene SA, a Swiss biologics CDMO specializing in Cell Line Development and challenging protein expression services. Single cell cloning is an essential and critical step of Cell Line Development, allowing the obtention a clonal cell line from a heterogenous pool of cells. Establishing clonality is crucial for clinical use, as it ensures consistency and reliability in downstream applications. However, without documented proof of clonality, a clonal cell line cannot be utilized in clinical settings. In light of this, ExcellGene SA relies on the Cytena Single Cell Dispenser, which offers both single cell dispensing and imaging capabilities. This technology provides documented evidence of clonality for all dispensed cells, ensuring the integrity and reliability of the resulting cell lines. The user-friendly nature of Cytena devices makes them invaluable tools for streamlining and optimizing laboratory workflows. Whether for research and development purposes or meeting CMC standards, Cytena's technology enables efficient single cells sorting and dispensing for the establishment of clonal cell lines.

We have started our cooperation with Yildiz technical University sabiotek lab. Yesterday we completed the Cytena C.sight training,which was very productive. We would like to thank Adrian Zambrano, PhD who effectively conveyed his knowledge to us in our training. We are greatful to our dear professor Cem Ustundag ,who has been with us since the first day we met,for his support. We aim to do better things.

Excited to see that our customer, EPFL, has developed a new pipeline named parSEQ. This pipeline, designed with the help of CYTENA's B.SIGHT, aims to optimize the capture of sequence-function datasets from screened protein variant pools. With parSEQ, the functional data of each screened variant is effectively paired with its corresponding sequence data.
Click on the link to read more...

Our lab uses the B.SIGHT to sort microbial cells from environmental samples. It has a very intuitive user interface and the product managers at CYTENA have been very helpful in optimizing the parameters to suit our needs. It dispenses single cells gently with precision and can fill a 384-well plate in under an hour. The sorting speed and accuracy has greatly maximized our capacity to create large libraries of pure cultures.

Single cell efficacy: 70–93%; Colony efficacy: 58–91% (after optimization) [...] The plating effort (to get single cells) can be lowered compared to limited dilution and FACS single cell deposition by the factor 4-5 [...]

The F.sight device is easy to use and, thanks to the use of sterile cartridges, does not require any complex cleaning procedures and prevents cross-contamination. The cells to be dispensed can be selected and reliably dispensed on the basis of size, roundness and fluorescence. The dispensing of the individual cells is documented with the aid of a camera, which also provides good quality control and documentation for each cell afterwards. Due to its small size, the Fsight can be operated in a sterile bench.

This instrument is a very reliable, cost-efficient and gentle cell dispensing system, which greatly reduces premature cell lysis and avoids debris, duplets, and clumps through its sophisticated optical control parameters. Cells can be efficiently selected based on size and roundness. In addition, the f.sight optionally allows the use of fluorescence as an optical selection parameter for gentle selection of e.g. GFP-labelled or antibody stained cells.

The main focus of our laboratory is to study programmed cell death and the effects of various media additives on different cell lines. Thus, we aim to test multiple molecules in multiple concentrations and combinations, so we must work on 96/24-well plates.However, we faced some difficulties in the case of suspension cell lines. In the case of regular 96/24-well plates, we experienced severe media evaporation and cell sedimentation at the bottom of the wells due to inadequate mixing. C.BIRD helped us overcome these problems by sufficiently mixing the cells and preventing media evaporation.

Very gentle and reliable cell dispensing system that allows for automation of assuredly monoclonal cell line generation with our very large and fragile protoplasts. The UP.SIGHT is easy to handle and easy to integrate into the existing lab due to its small footprint.

DNA purification using magnetic beads is a step in most of our protocols, and usually, the one that takes the longest. Furthermore, when purifying many samples is easy to make mistakes and introduce variability. The C.Wash has provided us with a practical solution to all these issues opening up significant amounts of time to do other things while improving our throughput and increasing the quality of our data. It is very easy to use, very easy to customize, and compatible with all our NGS protocols.

C.BIRD is an excellent instrument for incubating suspension cells in 96/24-well plates. It prevents media evaporation and offers adequate mixing for the cells to prevent their sedimentation. Thus, it provides ideal growth conditions for the cells, increasing the experiments' reliability and reproducibility. It can simultaneously incubate and mix 3 24/96-well plates with variable mixing speeds. The instrument is controlled by a lightweight, user-friendly and easy-to-use software. The only downside of the instrument is that it needs to be connected to a PC always; it can not operate without it. CYTENA offered great after-sale care. They taught us how to use the instrument and shared some tips and tricks. Later, they also shared some relevant in-house data with us to help with our experiments. Overall, C.BIRD offers great value for its price, since you can test various media compositions in a short time, with high throughput in low volumes, to save time and money.

Pro: High precision of single-cell printing and strong confidence of monoclonality. Automation API and excellent technical support. Con: Manual sample loading, medium throughput, occasion cartridge-to-cartridge variations

When using the single-cell printer, the number of monoclonal cell lines increased 6-fold compared to the limiting dilution process, therefore increasing the number of pools that could be cloned… By implementing both of these technologies, the cell line development process can be decreased from 9 months to 6 months.

The instrument is handy and super user-friendly. The machine is ready to sort after a quick quality control step and adaption of sort settings. It sorts single cells reliably. Due to the usage of cartridges cross-contamination is not an issue anymore and cells are sorted alive and happy since they are kept in their needed buffer during the entire sort process. An in-built laser enables us to differentiate between fluorescently labelled and unlabelled cells, which makes the whole cell sorting process even more precise.

This instrument is a very reliable, cost-efficient and gentle cell dispensing system, which greatly reduces premature cell lysis and avoids debris, duplets, and clumps through its sophisticated optical control parameters. Cells can be efficiently selected based on size and roundness. In addition, the f.sight optionally allows the use of fluorescence as an optical selection parameter for gentle selection of e.g. GFP-labelled or antibody stained cells.

Axxam has revolutionized the limiting dilution process with the UP.SIGHT instrument over the past year. We experienced the power of this remarkable tool with its intuitive interface and double assurance of clonality, enabling us to accelerate the production of stable monoclonal cell lines expressing a diverse range of targets for our high-throughput screening campaigns. This invaluable asset has been an integral part of our cutting-edge research programs, ensuring our work remains at the forefront of scientific innovation.

[CYTENA’s] cloning platform is suitable for generating clonal cell lines with a probability of ≥99.9%... Overall, the implementation of this novel technology provides significant advantages over traditional methods with respect to cost, simplicity, timing and flexibility.

High quality reproducible results.

With the single-cell dispenser UP.SIGHT by Cytena, we developed a new method of strain development in our company to automate the whole process, which is new or challenging because of handling comparably big and very fragile plant protoplasts (as opposed to small bacteria or mammalian cells for example). We needed to optimize the culture of moss,(single cell) sample preparation, and settings of the cell sort, to be able to move from a tedious by-hand process of clone selection and separation on agar plates to exclusively liquid cultures and high throughput single cell dispensing into multi titer plates.

This device is very easy to use, and can dispense cells gently, cheaply and reliably, preventing early cell rupture. It also enables filtering out debris, doublets and aggregates with its advanced optical settings. It is a very efficient way to sort GFP-expressing or labelled cells, as it is very fast, and less complicated to handle when compared to sorting cells using FACs.