New Customer Installation of LUMICKS’ z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer Confirms Value of Cell Avidity Measurement in Leading Labs Studying Biomarkers of Immune Oncology

LUMICKS, a leading life science tools company that develops instruments for dynamic single-molecule and cell avidity analysis, today announced that it has completed a new installation of its revolutionary z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer in the lab of Prof. Dirk Busch, Professor of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene at the School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich (TUM). The installation demonstrates the expanding interest in measuring cell avidity as a key biomarker in understanding immune oncology.

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The z-Movi instrument 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. 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 industrial laboratories around the world, with a rapid uptake in sales in 2021.

Prof. Busch and, Dr. Elvira D’Ippolito, a senior post-doctoral researcher at the Busch Lab, noted that, “A broad applicability of immunotherapy with T-cell receptor (TCR)-engineered T cells requires the fast identification of highly functional TCRs for diverse antigens. By measuring cellular avidity, we expect to select candidate TCRs for clinical application with unprecedented speed and precision.”

Added Gerrit Sitters, General Manager of LUMICKS Cell Avidity Business, “This new installation demonstrates the increased recognition by leading researchers of the valuable insights to be gained by using our LUMICKS technology. We are very pleased to contribute to a better scientific understanding of how measuring cell avidity can uncover critical biomarkers that help advance immune oncology efforts worldwide. We look forward to the insights and discoveries about immune system interactions that these two labs will produce in the future.”