Singleron Biotechnologies has obtained an exclusive licensing agreement with Yale University for the use of a Yale single-cell sequencing library preparation technology. Based on the principle of the Yale IP, Singleron developed their own patented SCOPE-chip® technology, short for Single Cell Omics Preparation Entity. The workflow includes tissue preparation, single cell partition, cell barcoding, nucleic acid amplification and library construction. The SCOPE-chip® technology opens new possibilities for clinical sample processing and single-cell analysis, and has been adopted rapidly by over 400 customer organizations over the world, with 80% of those being hospitals and clinical research institutions.
Singleron, as a highly innovative biotech company, has over 80 patents and patent applications, covering instrument and microfluidic system design, single cell amplification, library construction, and bioinformatic analysis algorithms, and has acquired over 40 software patents. In January 2019, Singleron launched their first single-cell RNA library kit, together with a one-stop solution for a complete sample-to-report workflow. In the middle of 2020, Singleron launched their first automatic single cell processing instrument - Singleron Matrix®.
The SCOPE-chip® captures single cells by partitioning single cells into hundreds of thousands of microwells on the chip following the Poisson distribution. Afterwards, an excess of Barcoding Beads is added to the microwells of the chip; the diameter of the beads versus that of the microwells ensuring that only one Barcoding Bead falls into each microwell. After cell lysis, Barcoding Beads, each with an unique cell label (Barcode), capture mRNA by binding to the poly (A) tail on the mRNA. Barcoding Beads are subsequently collected from the microwell chip, followed by reverse transcription of the mRNA captured by the Barcoding Beads into cDNA, and subsequent PCR amplification. The amplified cDNA is then fragmented and ligated with sequencing adapters. The end result is an NGS library that is compatible with Illumina sequencing instruments, that can also be run on Pacbio and MGI sequencing platforms with minor modifications.
By increasing the ratio of the number of microwells on chip to the number of cells loaded, the SCOPE-chip® can maintain a low doublet rate. Meanwhile, by selecting different chip throughput and microwell sizes, the SCOPE-chip® can analyze 500 – 30,000 single cells simultaneously and accommodate different cell morphologies and sizes.
High density microwell chip (HD Chip) can simultaneously capture up to 30,000 cells per chip, greatly improving the power to detect rare cell types. Under this high-throughput condition, cell types composed of <1% of entire population can be detected, with a doublet rate as low as 6%.
