With hundreds of applications received from more than 20 countries, Scipio bioscience’s first Grant program was a frank success. On the premises of submitting an abstract for a ground-breaking research project showcasing the power of single-cell, scientists were vying for financial and technological support for their entire workflow of their single-cell experiments. Worth USD $30,000, the winning grant packages included free Asteria™ benchtop scRNA-seq kits for sample preparation, the resulting sequencing costs, and free access to state-of-the-art data analysis software Cytonaut™.
After lengthy discussions within the R&D department and difficult choices to make among the many deserving projects, three winners finally made the cut.
Dr. Mohamed Omar, M.D. and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in N.Y., USA, plans to use his grant to investigate the role of the cellular structure supporting the tumor in prostate cancer. Called the stroma, this tissue mainly composed of fibroblasts has been under-documented for decades but might actually play a significant role in the tumor metastasis, notably to the bones. Thanks to single-cell, he aims to uncover the cell-cell communications networks regulating the different fibroblast populations in the stroma. Read more about his research here.
Dr. Siim Pauklin, PhD and Principal Investigator in the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Science (Botnar Research Center, Oxford University, UK), has his sights on the cancer stem cells at the core of pancreatic cancer tumors. Particularly resilient to chemotherapies and responsible for metastasis in distant organs, the genetic mechanisms regulating this cell population remain unclear. Armed with promising therapeutic compounds and single-cell technology, Dr. Pauklin will investigate how to fight those cancer stems cell to rise the survivability rates of affected patients. Read more about his research here.
Dr. Rainer Glauben, PhD and Principal investigator in the Intestinal Inflammation and Tumor Immunology team (Department of Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases and Rheumatology) at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, has been involved for years with a specific structure in the human guts called Peyer’s Patches. Expected to play a significant role in downplaying the inflammatory response to nutritional antigens, those small, collagen-rich, and tightly-packed clusters of cells have resisted to be studied with previous technologies. Thanks to single-cell technologies, Dr. Glauben and his PhD student Adrian Huck are hoping to finally characterize the cells that belong to Peyer’s Patches and their role in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IDBs). Read more about his research here.
All three projects will particularly benefit from Scipio bioscience’s Asteria™ and Cytonaut™ technologies, enabling the immediate sample processing of fresh patient biopsies on the laboratory bench, preserving the original transcriptome and fragile cells to gather the most authentic transcriptomic data, and generating the first single-cell analysis datasets within days.
The outcome of these projects will be featured on the scipio.bio website at the end of the studies.To contact us about the grant program, the Asteria™ benchtop scRNA-seq kit or the Cytonaut™ data analysis software, please write to info at scipio.bio.