Precision Data
for Drug Discovery
We are pioneering an AI-enabled platform that will help discover and develop the next generation of personalized medicines.
Lipid-modifying enzymes are among cancer's most valuable drug targets, yet most patients still relapse — because cancer cells are heterogeneous, and no one can measure, cell by cell, whether a cancer is responding or simply waiting to return.
Now, Pco Bio can.
A pressing unmet need remains for lipids:
functional measurement of drug-target activity in single cells
DNA, RNA and proteins each have single-cell techniques. For lipids, no technology can directly measure drug-target activity in single cells. That gap is where lipid-targeted drugs fail.
Our Approach
picoTLC, our proprietary high-throughput screening platform, and its suite of picoGlow assays measure lipid-modifying enzyme activity — and drug response — cell by cell.
Our microdevice separates and reads the lipids inside single cells, cell by cell.
picoTLC microchip
Each picoGlow assay is enabled by a fluorescently labeled enzyme reporter. As the enzyme converts substrate to product, picoTLC separates them, turning activity into a signal we can read in a single cell.
Sphingosine kinase phosphorylates Sph-Cy5 into S1P-Cy5. A drug that inhibits the kinase blocks this conversion, so the product never forms.
In a single control cell, both product (S1P-Cy5) and substrate (Sph-Cy5) appear — the enzyme is active. In a drug-treated cell, the product peak is gone: the drug has shut the enzyme down. (Reference)
Our Team
National Academy of Inventors
