This SLAS Technology Idea Exchange features three companies from the inaugural SLAS NexusXp People's Choice Award-winning collaboration: "TEST," - The Future of Drug Discovery: DeepCure's AI and Robotics Driven Pipeline.

DeepCure is accelerating drug discovery through AI, robotics and advanced informatics. A fully integrated hardware and software solution was deployed to synthesize, purify and advance 5,000 to 10,000 new compounds every month through the development pipeline. Design-Make-Test-Analyze (DMTA) was fully automated and increased laboratory efficiency by orders of magnitude. This was accomplished through deep collaboration between DeepCure, Waters and Biosero.

Representing TEST for this T.I.E. will be Thrasyvoulos Karydis (DeepCure), Dustin Whitson (Biosero), and Andrew Leightner (Waters), with Hayley Dyer (Biosero) and SLAS Scientific Manager Emily Yamasaki, Ph.D., serving as moderators.

SLAS Meet-Ups allows you to stay connected to the latest research and opportunities happening within the SLAS global community. Meet-Ups include the  following: SLAS Technology Idea Exchange, the SLAS Get Ahead series, Special Interest Group Science Circle series and any in-person or virtual Regional Community Meet-Ups. 

This SLAS Technology Idea Exchange is led by Len Glass, Senior Associate Scientist, FMC Corporation and Christopher Keim, Head Process Automation, Food Brewer.  The discussion will cover the three main topics about Agriculture Research and Development work. These topics include BioPharma similarities and differences, the two main Agriculture industry components between pesticides and GMOs, and current trends for the Agriculture industry.

This SLAS Technology Idea Exchange will be focused on sustainability in the lab featuring Grenova, a leader in sustainable laboratory solutions. 

Caitlin Harclerode, Senior Director of Marketing, and Jackson Horner, Senior Technical Applications Specialist with Grenova will lead a conversation exploring Grenova's innovative technology, which allows labs to wash and reuse plastic lab consumables. Grenova's technology is transforming lab operations and driving sustainability impact in the lab without compromising performance.

This T.I.E will also feature a spotlight discussion with Carleen Klumpp-Thomas, the Head of Automation at NCATS, and her experience with sustainability solutions.

This Technology Idea Exchange will explore Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as a form of wireless communication that incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to uniquely identify an object, animal, or person. Talia Karchem, Laboratory Software Consultant and Founder, Karchem Consulting, will explore how RFID can be used in laboratory automation with case studies focusing on: 
• Reagent/Consumables Management
• Sample Tracking
• Chain of Custody

AmplifiDx is developing a high-performance, low-cost microfluidic cartridge-based point-of-care testing system. The speaker will describe how the company has distinguished itself in an extremely crowded space, and how it continues to defy the odds even in this challenging economy for start-ups. This involves differentiated technology, but more importantly, creative partnerships and an understanding of the market.

When it comes to diagnostic devices, what is better? An implantable device? A wearable device? Or a point-of-care device, that takes a sample from you and measures in-vitro? They all have pros and cons, but the underlying answer is innovations of technology available for that particular diagnostic. In this talk, I will present my work starting companies from in-vitro to implantable -- from breast pumps , to a device that measures fetal-maternal hemorrhaging, to point-of-care virus detection, and finally on my newest endeavor, engineering a painless, minimally invasive, small form-factor continuous wearable glucose monitor for my daughter who was recently diagnosed with Type I diabetes. We are developing this platform to sense multiple analytes in a real-time, continuous manner, thus changing the paradigm for on-body biosensing and continuous biomonitoring for medicine.

Introduction: Conventional purification methods of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) suffer from significant shortcomings including low purity, low capture efficiency, long processing times, large sample volume requirement, need for specialized equipment and trained personnel, and high costs. Our group has previously developed a label-free insulator-based dielectrophoretic (iDEP) device for rapid and selective entrapment of sEVs based on their unique dielectric properties and size1-3. Here we report a comprehensive three-fold characterization of sEVs isolated using the iDEP device from human biofluids including serum, plasma, and urine by utilizing conventional flow cytometry (cFCM), advanced imaging flow cytometry (iFCM), and next generation miRNA sequencing indicating high yield and purity.
Results: cFCM indicated 55% exosomes from serum, 31% from plasma, and 30% from urine to be CD63+. Similar analysis showed 22% exosomes from serum, 41% from plasma, and 34% from urine to be CD81+. iFCM revealed high CD63+ expressions with 3.26 x 107 EVs/mL for serum, 5.08 x 106 EVs/mL for plasma, and 1.3 x 107 EVs/mL for urine. CD81+ expressions also revealed high yield with 1.32 x 108 EVs/mL, 2.05 x 106 EVs/mL, and 4.02 x 106 EVs/mL for serum, plasma, and urine, respectively. Percentage of sEVs positive for each marker were comparable to expressions for sEVs purchased from ATCC Inc. Following miRNA sequencing, hsa-miR-6236, hsa-miR-148a, and hsa-let7b were found to be most highly enriched across samples. PCA, with 54% coverage, indicated urine sEVs segregated to +PC1, while serum and plasma sEVs intermixed in a -PC1 cluster. Plasma samples were furthermore found to cluster on -PC2, while most coming from serum remained on +PC2.
Discussion: Analysis of sEVs isolated using the iDEP device was found comparable to those isolated using conventional techniques, including differential ultracentrifugation (DU) and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). cFCM analysis has previously indicated 38.1% exosomes positive for both CD63 and CD81 when using DU for isolation from Broncho Alveolar Lavage fluid samples4. iFCM analyses have reported comparable CD63+ expressions (~1 x 107 EVs/mL for DU and 3 X 107 EVs/mL for SEC) and CD81+ (1.5 x 106 EVs/mL for DU) from plasma and culture media, respectively5,6. Additionally, miRNAs known to be highly expressed in cancers were observed to be enriched across sample types7. This affirms our isolation methodology as a viable alternative to those currently established.
Conclusion: The utility of a label-free iDEP device in isolating sEVs from serum, plasma, and urine was demonstrated by performing NTA and multiparametric characterization using cFCM, iFCM, and miRNA sequencing. The comprehensive characterization verified that sEVs were successfully isolated from biofluids with minimal impact to vesicles’ integrity. The iDEP device hence has potential to be further evolved as a liquid biopsy platform for rapid isolation of sEVs based on their size and dielectric properties in clinical settings.

Seminal scientific discoveries started with, and were initially identified in, laboratories using large-scale petri dishes and high volumes of reagents. These experiments consumed more sample and time than compared to current day processes. To conserve and speed up the process, scientists are now ‘scaling-down’ the science into smaller units without jeopardizing the quality or the results. This can take the form of multi-well sample plates that contain upwards of 3,456 microwells per plate, utilizing the recent advances in microfluidics, or by harnessing the complexity of testing on animals by replacing them with much smaller surrogate organ-on-a-chip type systems. The inaugural SLAS 2023 Microscale Innovation in Life Sciences Symposium will provide attendees with a forum to communicate these scaled-down approaches and demonstrate their effectiveness through examples in podium talks, poster presentations and a technology provider exhibition. 

Poster Presentations from the 2023 Microscale Innovation in Life Science Symposium