In a nutshell, how does ARRALYZE work?

Modern applications that need to reveal characteristics of cells on the single cell level often have to compromise between throughput and costs. These trade-offs reduce the chances of finding outliers in large cell populations, risk having the necessary input for solid statistical averages, or require a large amount of expensive or rare material to be used. Some new technologies have addressed these issues recently. However, they only provide improvements for certain aspects and are only applicable for certain user groups. Remaining shortcomings are, among others, that many of these technologies move further away from in-vivo conditions than traditional methods by embedding cells in unnatural or even hostile environments, are too complex to be used by the average biolab personal and are often simply way too expensive for broad usage.

With ARRALYZE we strive to overcome these shortcomings by a holistic approach. The core of our technology are extremely miniaturized glass well arrays. Glass is an ideal material for cell biology experiments since it is chemically inert, optically transparent and provides a versatile set of options for altering the surface chemistry. The extreme miniaturization of well dimensions into the micrometer range allows not only to save costly reagents but also to immobilize huge cell populations on a small footprint like a microscope slide. 

But this is only one part of the ARRALYZE approach. To effectively take advantage of such high well-density we introduce the cells, beads or reagents in a controlled manner into these wells. This includes the possibility to put several cells or even different cell types or beads into the wells.  

After the controlled introduction of the cells - and at any time during the experiment - the glass arrays can be imaged. This provides information about the cells itself and also proof of monoclonality or cell-cell interactions are accessible this way. 
For collecting and analyzing the huge amount of data, the ARRALYZE software is equipped with machine learning algorithms to count or track the cells automatically, to name a few features.

For applications that require to extract sample material or cells of interest alive from the well, ARRALYZE provides an extraction unit that allows to isolate the content of the wells in a controlled manner. 

This way studying thousands to hundreds of thousands of cells at the single cell level, on a small footprint, at the best possible in-vitro conditions, identifying outliers and isolating cells of interest alive is made possible with ARRALYZE in only one machine.     

Beside the technological advancements, we strive to make the ARRALYZE platform not only broadly affordable but also easy to use. This way we want to make the advantages and possibilities that ARRALYZE provides accessible to as many users as possible and enable them to make groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of cell therapy, monoclonal antibodies, cell line development, synthetic biology or any other field of single cell analyses for which the ARRALYZE approach can provide a benefit.