Swiss medtech firm Lunaphore Technologies has introduced a device for automated testing of cancer tissue samples that is claimed to give results in under 30 minutes.
Image: Lunaphore's new product LabSat. Photo: Courtesy of Business Wire.
Lunaphore stated that its LabSat is a CE-marked instrument that complies with applicable product health, safety and environmental regulations of the European Union and will be available in majority of European countries.
LabSat is the first product in the company’s pipeline to reach the market since its launch.
The system includes a single-slide, automated reagent delivery system performing immunohistochemistry (IHC) tests on tissue samples within 10 to 30 minutes.
The company claims that the performance of the device is achieved because of the new microfluidic tissue processor lying at the core of Lunaphore’s innovation.
This technology enables high precision tissue staining, with a drastic reduction in reagent incubation times.
Lunaphore was created after 9 years of research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and is presently developing laboratory automation solutions with the potential for research and tissue diagnostics based on microfluidic technology, called Fast Fluidic Exchange (FFeX).
The company claims that its technology attempts to produce results that correlate with real biomarker amounts compared to traditional methods. Preliminary tests show that such precision could not only decrease the number of ambiguous outcomes but also potentially reveal normally hidden biomarker information for better diagnosis.
This, as touted by the company, is possible because its FFeX technology actively transports reagents to tissue surface, filling the volume in microfluidic chamber homogenously, within a second. Preliminary tests on real patients suggest that this technology could reach higher precision in quantitative diagnostics results compared to standard hospital techniques.
The technology also allows for precision control of reaction time and helps decrease overall immunoassay time to a few minutes compared to the 2-8 hours of time taken for the current standards.
Lunaphore founder and CEO Ata Tuna Ciftlik said: “This very first product aims to bring our breakthrough technology to the hands of our customers. We believe that its precision and speed will open a multitude of staining possibilities for the users. In parallel, we’re working on the next product iterations to answer the needs of customers with greater needs of automation as well as a wider portfolio of applications.”