IKOTECH is developing tools to help diagnose and treat certain types of Cancer and enable a cure for Type I (juvenile) Diabetes. We are achieving this through the commercialization of our innovative magnetic cell separation and analysis technologies.
Researchers and clinicians are seeking to scale cell purification techniques for stem cell treatments and other cellular diagnostics/therapeutics to bring cutting-edge therapies from the laboratory bench to the bedside, a challenge known as “translational medicine.” This will require “ultra-high speed” cell sorting that can process 500,000+ cells per second while still maintaining good cell viability to translate the research into clinical use. Existing state-of-the-art cell sorting instruments (known as “flow cytometers, or FACS”) have reached the limits of physics at 70,000 cells per second, which is too slow for practical therapeutic use. Our product has shown in testing to process up to 10 million cells per second. In practical terms IKOTECHʼs technology can sort as many cells in 10 minutes as a flow cytometer can sort in 24 hours with up to two-parameter sorting. This is expected to lead to breakthroughs in the area of cancer stem cells research (a field highlighted in the September 2008 issue of The Economist) and revolutionize stem cell and pancreatic islet transplantation, increasing their viability as approved therapies.
IKOTECHʼs cell sorting system will compete to help improve the ability to diagnose up to 1.4 million cancer victims annually, treat up to 75,000 new cancer patients annually, and to help cure 3 million existing and 15,000 new annual victims of Juvenile Diabetes.
We integrate patented cell sorting technologies with proprietary high-speed computing, software, imaging, nanotechnology, magnetics, automation, and immunology to create the next generation cell sorting system. Our flagship product is the Quadrasep QMS™ System, which bundles custom instrumentation and reagents to achieve the needs of clinical- grade, ultra-high speed, two-parameter sorting. Our HyperFlux Velocimeter™ is the first commercially available instrument for measuring the motion of microscopic particles in a magnetic field, a measurement necessary and useful to a large number of scientific pursuits, and coincidentally the unique key to empowering the Quadrasep to operate at such high speeds.
