Cyntellect announced that its parent company, Oncosis Inc, has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The funds will be used for work on the proprietary laser-enabled analysis and processing (LEAP) technology for living cells, particularly the company's opto-injection technology.

"The ability to load living cells with a variety of compounds safely and effectively is critical to many areas of basic and clinical research, including drug discovery and gene therapy," said Dr. Fred Koller, COO of Cyntellect. "Opto-injection could overcome many of the viability and efficiency hurdles associated with currently available technologies to insert macromolecules into cells, and Cyntellect is working to tap opto-injection's commercial potential by implementing a high-throughput form of this technology. We are pleased that the National Science Foundation has recognized the quality of Oncosis' research into opto-injection, as evidenced by this funding."

In opto-injection, foreign macromolecules are introduced into cells by briefly permeabilizing the cell membrane, using a focused laser beam, with little effect on cell viability.

Opto-injection is an integral part of Cyntellect's LEAP technology, the only platform that provides both high-throughput, multi-parameter in situ cellular analysis and selective laser-based cellular manipulation. Besides opto-injection, other laser-based manipulations that are enabled on the LEAP platform include elimination of unwanted cells, photo-activation of bioactive molecules, interrogation of fluorescent reporters in cells, and other advances for cellular processing and cell-based assays.