- Financing led by M Ventures, with participation from existing investors ARCH Venture Partners, Illumina Ventures, OMX Ventures, +ND Capital, and Longwall Ventures
- Novel single-cell platform allows users to control and profile massively parallel and sequential droplet- based assays, with end-to-end tracking and live cell recovery for downstream applications
- Funding will accelerate company growth and expansion leading up to full commercial launch further enabled by appointment of Chief Commercial Officer Paul Steinberg
Lightcast is advancing single-cell functional analysis with a flexible droplet-based platform that can load, select, process, analyze, and recover tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of individual cells at the same time. This novel technology enables the manipulation of addressable picolitre droplets with light in a massively parallel manner, enabling sequential assays beyond transcriptome-only readouts. Unlike standard microfluidic methods, Lightcast’s platform offers greater flexibility to analyze a wide range of cell types and assays, as well as the precision to meticulously control and monitor the number, occupancy, location, and movement of each droplet. The unprecedented flexibility, scalability, and control of this approach will streamline workflows for drug discovery and development, and promote translational and basic research advancements.
Paul Loeffen, CEO of Lightcast, commented:
“The power of single-cell analysis to uncover the complexities of biology has become increasingly evident, but much of the work still focuses on the transcriptome as the primary readout. The next stage is to enable functional single-cell analysis at a comparable scale and with increased precision and control. With this funding, we will drive commercialization of our platform to meet the critical need of unifying diverse functional assays into a streamlined workflow to accelerate drug development.”
Christian Uhrich, Principal at M Ventures, said:
"Lightcast’s unique single-cell platform will be offering a completely unique experience in conducting complex experiments with ease, speed, and precision at an unmatched scale for basic and translational research as well as drug discovery. We continue to be impressed by the development of the organization and experience of the team to build a leading company in the single-cell analysis market. We’re happy to support Lightcast into the next stage of its development.”
Lightcast has also strengthened its executive team with the appointment of Paul Steinberg as CCO. With a track record of over 20 years in leading commercial teams, corporate growth strategies, business development efforts and global accounts in life science tools, Mr. Steinberg will play a crucial role in the company's commercial launch and spearheading global sales and marketing endeavors. He brings extensive experience in the life sciences tools industry, particularly in bringing ground-breaking single-cell genomic and proteomic technologies to market and achieving key launch milestones. Prior to joining Lightcast, Mr. Steinberg held key leadership positions at renowned companies including Resolve Biosciences, Levitas Bio, NanoString Technologies, Fluidigm, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Mr. Steinberg holds a bachelor of science in biology and a master of science in analytical chemistry, both from the University of Miami.
