Fluxion Biosciences expands Advanced Therapeutics Discovery Services unit

Fluxion Biosciences, a privately held drug discovery and diagnostic tools and services company, has announced that it is expanding its Advanced Therapeutics Discovery Services business unit to support the growing demand for assay support of the company’s unique cell analysis platforms. Growth will be supported by increasing lab staff and relocating to a new, larger laboratory. Fluxion offers a range of high-value cell assays in ion channels, functional cell analysis, and circulating tumor cell analysis.

The expansion of the services unit is driven by customer requests across all application segments. “As our customers in drug discovery and life science research look to increase productivity, they are focusing their own resources on those activities where they add the most value”, stated Jeff Jensen, CEO. “This has driven our customers to pursue partnering and outsourcing in a range of areas, including assay development, assay optimization, system maintenance and support, and screening. Our cell analysis solutions are often focused at challenging, complex live-cell assays, so offering service capabilities on our platforms delivers substantial benefits to both existing and new customers. We are seeing many customers opt to use our services as a cost-effective way to utilize our technology before bringing it in house.”

Fluxion provides services on its three unique platforms for cell analysis:

• Ion channel screening: Fluxion offers ion channel service capabilities on its IonFlux system and mCells cell lines for assay development and screening on ligand- and voltage-gated ion channels.
• Live cell analysis: The BioFlux system provides a convenient solution to study “in vivo” cell function in a high throughput, low cost “in vitro” format by precise control of the cell micro-environment. This novel "artery on a chip" is used in a range of applications, including development of anti-platelet drugs, CAR-T cell trafficking studies, cancer cell migration/invasion, and biofilm analysis.
• Liquid Biopsy: Circulating tumor cell analysis is performed using the IsoFlux platform, and cell-free DNA analysis utilizes Fluxion’s Spotlight NGS panels. Analytical capabilities include CTC enumeration, protein marker detection, PCR, NGS, and other molecular diagnostic techniques.

To support the expansion of the Discovery Services unit, Fluxion is moving to a newly-constructed laboratory in Oakland, CA, more than doubling the current lab space. The new facility will be occupied in mid-October, and additional personnel are being added to support the expansion. The field team continues to offer assay optimization, installation, training, preventive maintenance, and instrument service for customer-purchased systems globally.

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