Over the years, the fields of molecular diagnostics and drug development have undergone rapid evolution. These domains play vital roles in patient care, from assisting healthcare providers in identifying different diseases to discovering advanced solutions. For organizations that intend to develop innovative therapies, obtaining high-quality tissue samples from patients and ensuring that these samples retian their tissue integrity is of paramount importance. However, the most commonly used method today for assessing RNA quality often results in discarding of over 60% of precious, patient-derived tissue samples.
Molecular Instruments (MI), a biotechnology startup that spun-out of the California Institute of Technology in 2018, has launched a revolutionary product based on its proprietary HCR™ Platform that significantly enhances every workflow that today depends on high quality RNA-ISH. The need for molecular diagnostic tools that preserve patient samples has witnessed a rising demand, especially bolstered by the global COVID-19 pandemic. With the launch of the first of its many planned innovative products, MI aims to transform the field through its portfolio of HCR™ Products that make complex bioimaging routine and accessible to all.
The company designs and manufactures kits for quantitative bioimaging in academic research, drug development, clinical pathology, and diagnostics. With its newly available HCR™ RNA-CISH kits, MI pledges (1) best-in-class performance, (2) industry-leading turnaround time of 6 hours on supported hardware, and (3) at least twice as affordable a price compared to any competing alternative. Already MI has established partner sites at nearly every top 20 biopharma in the US, and is growing rapidly thanks to their approach of ensuring full compatibility with all popular automation platforms used in the industry.
Among the many benefits enabled through the use of its innovative HCR™ Platform is the lack of any necessary harsh tissue pre-treatment. Since the HCR™ Platform is based on dynamic nucleic acid nanotechnology and employs reagents that are orders of magnitude smaller than traditional methods, no protease pre-treatment is needed for reagents to penetrate the sample. This results in maximial preservation of tissue morphology and straightforward RNA/protein co-detection, without any additional optimization.
MI plans to broaden its spatial imaging capabilities beyond its latest HCR™ RNA-CISH product. The company is set to launch their next-generation HCR™ RNA-FISH product in the coming months, followed by HCR™ IHC/IF kits later in the year. MI firmly believes in the distinctive advantages offered by the HCR™ Platform and has developed an extensive lineup of products that incorporate it.
“We believe that easier, more routine bioimaging will be a key part of health and medicine in the future and that researchers and clinicians require better, more capable tools to be able to take full advantage of that future. We’re excited to be entering at the forefront of the research tools space,” said Dr. Anesh Acharya, MI’s Vice President of Commercial.