Lunaphore and Bethyl Laboratories announce partnership to leverage library of primary antibodies on COMET™ platform and expand spatial biology services

LAUSANNE, Switzerland and WALTHAM, Mass. – May 10, 2023 – 6:00 pm (CEST) – Lunaphore, a Swiss life sciences company developing technology to enable spatial biology in every laboratory, and Bethyl Laboratories, a Fortis Life Sciences company and provider of high-quality reagents and custom services for discovery, development, and manufacturing, today announced a partnership to promote compatibility and expansion of Bethyl’s library of primary antibodies on Lunaphore’s COMET™ platform.

Bethyl, which has also acquired a COMET™ instrument for use in its facilities, will be able to provide additional services to its customers using the Lunaphore platform. This agreement will enable researchers to leverage Bethyl’s highly qualified antibodies and services with the capabilities of Lunaphore’s COMET™, which is the only fully automated high-throughput, hyperplex platform ensuring scalability and reproducibility without the need to conjugate primary antibodies.

Bethyl has manufactured and validated over 35 antibodies for use on the COMET™ and is continuing to add to this portfolio weekly. Bethyl also provides access to Lunaphore’s SPYRE™ Antibody Panels, which can be combined with Bethyl antibodies for panel expansion up to 40-plex.

"We are glad to add Bethyl & Fortis as one of our high-quality partners to help us expand the reach of our spatial biology capabilities. Together, we will be providing researchers with reliable antibodies and assays to support scientific discovery," said Déborah Heintze, Chief Marketing Officer at Lunaphore. "Partnership with scientists has been a pillar of Lunaphore since the beginning, and we are pleased to enter into this agreement with a company that sees a similar value in providing support and quality so that researchers can accelerate their processes with reliable and consistent results."

"Our proximity to research laboratories will give scientists ready access to the benefits of our primary antibodies combined with the COMET™ platform," said Dr. Mike Spencer, Sr. Director of Antibody Validation & IHC at Bethyl. "We look forward to expanding our offerings with this partnership to ensure even more customers and researchers can access the capabilities of spatial biology, now paired with the quality antibodies and service they have always enjoyed from Bethyl."

Lunaphore recently expanded its offerings to become the first universal, end-to-end solution for spatial biology research. To learn more, please visit: https://lunaphore.com/

About COMET™

COMET™ is the only fully automated, high-throughput, hyperplex platform ensuring scalability and reproducibility without the need to conjugate primary antibodies. COMET™ provides walk-away automation, integrating staining, imaging, and image preprocessing steps to obtain standard hyperplex images. COMET™ generates highly robust and reproducible data with full tissue preservation, allowing researchers to perform downstream modalities such as H&E or transcriptomics using the same slide. Its superior tissue profiling capabilities facilitate the analysis of 40 different spatial markers in each automated run on a tissue slide. In contrast to other spatial biology solutions, COMET™ works with off-the-shelf, label-free primary antibodies, making panel design much more flexible and faster than any other hyperplex solution. COMET™ works with regular glass slides from standard histology workflows; it is validated for human and mouse samples and is compatible with any other animal sample. The platform can be used for a wide range of research applications, allowing for a dramatic improvement in the understanding of disease pathology. Orders of the new COMET™ version can be placed and will be available for shipment in the upcoming months. To learn more about the COMET™ platform, please visit: https://lunaphore.com/products/comet/

About Lunaphore

Lunaphore Technologies S.A. is a Swiss company born in 2014 with the vision of enabling spatial biology in every laboratory. Lunaphore provides solutions based on a game-changing chip technology that can extract spatial proteomic and transcriptomic data from tumors and other tissues, transforming any assay into multiplex spatial biology through a streamlined and easily integrated process. Lunaphore empowers researchers in immunology, immuno-oncology, and neuroscience to push the boundaries of scientific discovery and drug development. Lunaphore’s technology enables the identification of biomarker "signatures" with clinical relevance to support the development of diagnostic tools and streamline clinical trials, to ultimately improve patient outcomes. For further information on Lunaphore and its products, please visit https://lunaphore.com

About Fortis Life Sciences

Fortis Life Sciences, headquartered in Waltham, MA, partners with life sciences and diagnostics companies to design, develop and manufacture custom integrated reagent solutions. Fortis was founded in 2020 with the mission to offer world-class products & services coupled with best-in-class customer experience. Over the course of two years, Fortis has built a portfolio of high-quality products and brands serving various scientific end markets, including diagnostic, therapeutic, and research. Fortis offers CDMO services for commercial diagnostics and therapeutics (under cGMP & ISO:13485 compliance), custom recombinant & VHH antibody development, nanoparticle synthesis & manufacturing, bulk enzyme & recombinant protein production, and other affinity reagents. To learn more about Fortis Life Sciences, please visit https://www.fortislife.com/

For further information contact:

Irene Tamayo

Lunaphore Corporate Communications

Email: [email protected]