The Technology behind COMET™
Our unique approach to spatial biology.
An innovative technology for every lab
Lunaphore’s mission is to develop solutions for tissue analysis to accelerate research from basic to clinical applications.
Thanks to unique proprietary core technologies, we have developed laboratory automation solutions that decrease assay time while obtaining high-quality results.
A game-changing chip technology
The core of our innovative approach is based on a unique patented microfluidic COMET™ Chip (Figure 1).
Our microfluidic chip snaps itself on top of the tissue section on a standard pathology slide forming a reversible and isolated reaction chamber.
The delivery of reagents and buffers happens through the microfluid channels through highly controlled conditions, from the reagent flow speed to the incubation time.
Figure 1: Close view on Lunaphore patented microfluidic chip technology.
Fast Fluidic Exchange (FFeX™) technology
The COMET™ Chip empowers our patented FFeX™ technology, where reagents are actively transported to the tissue surface and fill the volume in the microfluidic chamber homogenously and within a second. This allows fast, uniform and reproducible staining and wash across the tissue sample compared to standard static staining methods relying primarily on diffusion. Together, the dynamic flow of reagents enables the user to decrease the incubation time from several hours to only few minutes.
Benefits of FFex™
Staining uniformity, is guaranteed by the dynamic incubation and hermetic seal avoiding associated flow gradients.
Speed, thanks to the dynamic flow, the incubation time is reduced from several hours to only few minutes.
Precision, the shallow microfluidic chip chamber together with the active flow enable highly dynamic and controlled tuning of assay conditions .
Sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF™)
COMET™’s approach to multiplexing is based on the sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF™) technology (Rivest et al. bioRxiv 2023), a process involving successive cycles of staining, imaging, and elution, without any human intervention.
In between high-quality staining and elution, the FFex™ technology performs an image acquisition step by COMET™ integrated microscope through COMET™ Chip glass window. Images are acquired at every cycles and automatically preprocessed.
All seqIF™ steps are fully automated but protocol optimization is granted at every steps.
Figure 3: Lunaphore patented seqIF™ technology's workflow.
Benefits of seqIF™
Tissue preservation, short incubation time prevents tissue morphology degradation, enabling reproducible high-plex assays and downstream analysis.
Reproducibility, highly reproducible results are generated from controlled conditions and assay automation.
Automation, seqIF™ on COMET™ is fully automated from sample to preprocessed data, while preserving user freedom to tune all cycle steps parameters individually.
Unmatched reproducibility
Our seqIF™ technology allows for achieving consistent results across multiple parameters.
We demonstrated that reproducible staining can be achieved across different days, multiple devices, and across multiple runs in the same device, with less than 15% coefficient of variation of the signal-to-background ratio across all tested parameters.
To access the full quality data or know more about COMET™ technology, contact us at [email protected].
Figure 4: Schematic representation of reproducibility parameters extraction.