BD boasts of a landmark advancement in flow cytometry

BD (NYSE:BDX) touted a study on innovation in flow cytometry that featured as the cover story of the journal Science.

Franklin Lakes, New Jersey-based BD’s study was conducted in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). It evaluated BD’s flow cytometry efforts that add fluorescence imaging and image-based decision-making to sort individual cells at high speed based on the visual details of each cell and not solely on the type or quantity of the biomarkers that are.

The company said in a news release that the new technology — known as BD CellView image technology — has the potential to transform immunology, cell biology and genomics research while enabling new cell-based therapeutic discovery.

BD says CellView can capture multiple images of individual cells flowing through the system at a speed of 15,000 cells per second. It also adds a previously impossible capability of sorting cells based on detailed microscopic image analysis of individual cells at this speed. This addition of imaging to the traditional biomarker identification and quantification not only identifies if and how much of a biomarker is present, but also its location or how it is distributed withinthe cell.

The company aims to use the technology to fill a major gap in biomedical research by enabling scientists to more rapidly view and isolate cells with specific, observable traits of interest, allowing for the acceleration of discovery research and potential therapies or cures for disease in fields like virology and oncology.

“This innovation has overcome the typical compromise between speed and precision of sorting individual cells,” BD Chairman, CEO & President Tom Polen said in the release. “This breakthrough essentially equates to a researcher looking into a microscope, identifying specific characteristics of a cell of interest, and based on what they see, sorting each individual cell for further analysis — all at a rate of nearly 1 million cells every minute. The technology can analyze more than 1,000 times the amount of data compared to traditional flow cytometry methods, and sort cells at a rate of 15,000 per second based on their images.

“BD was the first company to commercialize flow cytometry technology in the 1970s, and this is yet another example of our storied history of innovation and technical leadership in this space.”