New Study Highlights Cell Avidity’s Power to Provide Insights into the Robustness of T Cell Activation

Amsterdam, the Netherlands – March 23, 2022 – LUMICKS, a next generation life science tools company, today announced that a research study published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences from the Radboud University Medical Center, led by researchers in the team of Professor G. J. Adema, detailed a novel method to study lead compound effects on immune cell interactions by employing LUMICKS’ z-Movi^® Cell Avidity Analyzer.

The interaction between dendritic cells (DCs) and T cells is a critical step in the activation of T cells and initiation of the immune response. The strength and duration of the bond formed between DCs and T cells plays an important role in the robustness of the immune response mounted by T cells. Therefore, modulating the functionality of DCs to increase their avidity to T cells could be a key factor in improving cancer immunotherapies.

The z-Movi Cell Avidity Analyzer provides an exciting new method to assess the avidity between immune cells, such as DCs and T cells, in response to the addition of lead compounds that can alter DC functionality and potentially further the development of novel cellular immunotherapies. In this study, the authors examined the effect of a sialic acid-blocking mimetic on DCs and DC-T-cell interactions.

Said Prof. Adema, professor of Molecular Immunology at the Radiotherapy & OncoImmunology lab in the department of Radiation Oncology at RIMLS/Radboud, “The z-Movi platform was a great help to quantify dendritic cell – T-cell interactions and allowed us to demonstrate the important role sialic acids play in both antigen-dependent and the antigen-independent interactions between these immune cells.”

Added Andrea Candelli, Chief Scientific Officer of LUMICKS, “We are very pleased by this paper’s findings about the important role measuring cell avidity can play in improving our understanding of the immune system. We take great pride in collaborating with and supporting leading scientific researchers around the world who find that the power of our revolutionary technology can help them discover underlying insights that advance our ability to treat human health issues.”

The z-Movi measures the avidity between immune cells and their targets, enabling researchers to identify the most potent immunotherapeutic effector cells. This new technology provides predictive, reproducible, and fast results at a single-cell resolution without compromising cell viability, and ensures sterile and safe sample handling. LUMICKS’ cell avidity solutions use acoustics to measure forces and interactions between cells, with the goal of shortening the drug development cycle for adoptive cell therapies and other immunotherapies and reducing failure rates in clinical trials. First introduced in 2020, the z-Movi has found wide appeal in academic and biopharma laboratories around the world, with a rapid uptake in sales in 2021.

About LUMICKS

LUMICKS is a leading life science tools company that develops equipment for Dynamic Single-Molecule and Cell Avidity analysis, two rapidly emerging areas in biology research and immuno-oncology. LUMICKS’ tools allow researchers to build the crucial and as yet unfinished bridge between structure and function at both a molecular and a cellular level. This is achieved by applying and measuring forces around biological interactions, enabling the detailed real-time analysis of underlying biological mechanisms. LUMICKS’ C-Trap^® Optical Tweezers – Fluorescence & Label-free Microscopy, allows scientists to analyze complex biological processes in real-time. Similarly, the z-Movi^® Cell Avidity Analyzer enables the measurement and selection of immune cells based on their real-time interactions with target cells.