[Single cell automation powers drug development] Learn how Roche and Pfizer use Chromium Connect to optimize drug development

10x Genomics' Chromium Connect is an automated platform suitable for single-cell gene expression and single-cell immunoassays.

With our flagship product, Chromium Connect, users can perform single cell separation and barcode addition, and perform integrated analysis of single cells with high throughput and large-scale

The power of consistency, productivity, and integration

Whether conducting one-off research in an academic context, or performing high-throughput processing in a core laboratory, or conducting multiple tests in a drug discovery and development environment at the same time, researchers in all fields can appreciate the Chromium Connect The benefits include the ability to produce consistent results, maximize laboratory productivity, and integrate proven processes

Chromium Connect instrument can help researchers to carry out single-cell research, even in different experiments and different user operations, it can also generate consistent high and reproducible single-cell gene expression results

Now, through the newly added 5'gene expression solution automation function, users can solve more difficult immunological problems

Automation applications in pharmaceuticals: driving drug discovery and development

The single-cell method is an improvement and enhancement of the traditional analysis of bulk cells.

Each stage of drug development requires consistent and repeatable results, which is the key to the success of clinical research

Roche

According to Dr.

"We will use different sample preparation programs to process a variety of samples, such as cell suspensions and tissues from different sources, and then generate single-cell suspensions for scRNA-seq analysis.

Dr.

"When automation is not achieved, we face huge challenges

Tamara Hüsser

Pfizer is another beta test participant in the automated immunoassay process

"The company plans to use this platform for various research, including tumor animal models, human clinical samples, cancer cell lines, tumor organoid cells, etc.

Mark Ozeck

Consistency is the key

Scientists at the Roche Innovation Center in Zurich usually try to use Chromium Controller to process 8 samples in parallel, and carry out an average of up to 3 runs per week
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There are 7 people in the laboratory, 2 of them are responsible for the scRNA-seq process (with the assistance of other colleagues when preparing samples)
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After introducing Chromium Connect to the lab, they realized the benefits of consistency
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"Due to its ease of operation, Connect allows the single-cell technology to'popularize', because colleagues with little experience can successfully process samples for scRNA-seq analysis
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At Pfizer, scientists run an average of 8 samples at a time, and perform a run on the Chromium Controller once a week
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There are 4 people in the laboratory, and one of them is responsible for the scRNA-seq process
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"It greatly reduces the manual operation time and gives our laboratory scientists the energy to do other tasks," Pfizer said
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Productivity is crucial

The use of Chromium Connect gives the Roche Innovation Center in Zurich an additional method to optimize the workflow
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"This undoubtedly helps to increase productivity because we don't need to prepare libraries manually," they said
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“Although 10x Genomics’ library preparation is simple, it is also quite time-consuming
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The automation of this task allows us to increase throughput and allow the same number of people to process more samples
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Moreover, we have more time to complete the new protocol.
Development, sample processing optimization and other important tasks to improve our scRNA-seq process
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Pfizer's Ozeck also agrees with this statement, saying it optimizes the workflow
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"While Connect is generating single-cell libraries, we are able to carry out other projects, so Connect allows us to do more with less and doubles our productivity
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The integration process is scaled up

Today, with Chromium Connect's automated immunoassays, pharmaceutical users can expand the scale of experiments and obtain more data in each experiment, thereby supporting more projects and faster completion times
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In terms of scaling up, the Roche Innovation Center in Zurich stated, “As far as we are concerned, the main limitation of the number of samples that can be processed per day lies in sample preparation, namely tissue digestion, FACS sorting, etc.

Connect does not significantly change our single-day throughput
However, the automation of library preparation has helped to increase the number of runs we carry out each week, and now we can easily process up to 32 samples per week, from thawing samples to ready-to-run libraries
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"

Although the Zurich Roche Innovation Center hopes to use only Chromium Connect in library preparation, "it is currently impossible, because some projects include multiple analysis of samples or the addition of feature barcodes, which cannot be implemented in robots
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Pfizer’s Ozeck expressed the same concern, but believes that “once the Connect instrument adds sample multiple analysis capabilities”, the scale of the experiment can be expanded
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At the same time, the increase in productivity allows Pfizer's projects to advance faster, which is the key to the development of the industry
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"Connect allows us to deliver other projects earlier than ever before, because we don't have to stand in front of the bench and manually prepare single-cell libraries
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If you are interested in learning more about how Chromium Connect automates single-cell gene expression and immunoassay processes, please click here to visit the product page
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This article describes the research and processes carried out by scientists from Pfizer and the Roche Innovation Center in Zurich
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The views and opinions in this article do not represent the promotion or promotion of 10x Genomics or any of its products
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