Fluidigm Corporation today introduced HeliosTM, a CyTOF® platform that enables system-level biology at single-cell resolution, on an accessible, expandable system designed for breakthrough discovery. Mass cytometry has catalyzed the revolution of single-cell proteomics, enabling the most comprehensive understanding of cell phenotypes, signaling pathways and function. Helios dawns as the most advanced tool for cellular exploration with streamlined workflows and multi-modal capabilities for advancing single-cell biology.
The Helios platform delivers an extensive list of features and advances to the core CyTOF technology, all intended to bring enhanced performance and convenience of operation. This includes a significantly more intuitive and easy-to-use software interface with real-time data display, normalization and control. Helios also provides improved sensitivity to detect and resolve lower abundance targets and an expanded mass range of 135 discrete channels with virtually no signal overlap or background noise compared to conventional techniques. This enables more comprehensive and straightforward panel designs and higher quality data sets. A synchronized suite of upgrades to the sample introduction assembly and procedure triples the rate of data acquisition, or system throughput, with a considerable increase in cell transmission efficiency and consistency.
Fluidigm also announced proteomics sample barcoding, which enables Helios and all other CyTOF customers to take advantage of multiplexing in their experimental design. Fluidigm’s new barcoding reagent kit accommodates the unique barcoding of up to 20 samples such that they can be combined, stained and acquired as one multiplexed sample. Multiplexing improves data quality as samples are prepared, processed and acquired under a common protocol, thereby eliminating any technical variation from sample preparation through data collection. It substantially increases throughput by reducing staining protocol and instrument collection time. Barcoding is indispensable for any experiment where unraveling of biological complexity requires multiple samples, time points and assay conditions.
“The Helios platform and sample barcoding deliver significant improvements to performance, ease-of-use, and data quality to our customers, providing more parametric information from a single sample than any other cellular analysis system in the marketplace,” said Gajus Worthington, Fluidigm President and Chief Executive Officer. “We also plan to enable single-cell RNA profiling and high-dimensional in-situ imaging on the Helios system in the near future,” Worthington noted.
Fluidigm will begin shipments of Helios systems in the third quarter of 2015.
Fluidigm at CYTO 2015
Fluidigm is unveiling the Helios platform with sample barcoding at CYTO 2015, the 30th Congress of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry being held this week in Glasgow, United Kingdom with product demonstrations, seminars and workflow consultations available to all attendees. In addition, Fluidigm will be hosting a CyTOF User Group meeting and reception that will feature presentations by Fluidigm customers from around the world.