LUMICKS unveils Avidion platform to enhance cell therapy development precision
LUMICKS has launched Avidion, a next-generation Cell Avidity platform designed to address critical gaps in cell therapy development by measuring how immune cells physically engage with tumour targets.
Bridging the preclinical-clinical divide
The Amsterdam-based company announced the European launch of Avidion at CICON 2025 in Utrecht, targeting a significant challenge in immunotherapy development: 83% of CAR-T cell therapies fail after preclinical stages. Current assessment methods create a blind spot between molecular binding assays and functional killing assays, leaving researchers unable to fully understand cell-cell interaction mechanisms.
“There’s something very elegant about the solution. Avidion makes it exceptionally straightforward. You make the layer. You see the cells. There’s a building of confidence,” said Peter Chockley, Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University.
Cell Avidity – the combined strength of cell-cell binding – provides crucial insights into how therapeutic cells physically engage their targets. This measurement bridges the gap between in vitro binding data and in vivo therapeutic outcomes, offering researcher a more complete understanding of cellular interactions.
High-throughput integration for laboratory workflows
Avidion’s platform accommodates standard 96-well plates, enabling seamless integration into existing laboratory protocols. The fully automated system employs machine learning algorithms to deliver reproducible data across screening panels and detailed characterisation studies.
Marcus Barden, postdoctoral researcher from Hinrich Abken’s laboratory at Regensburg University, highlighted the platform’s analytical capabilities: “High throughput [and] larger datasets to understand the correlation between binder characteristics and CAR-signalling quantity and quality is definitely the way to go.”
Established scientific foundation
The Cell Avidity approach has demonstrated its value through over 50 high-impact publications from more than 70 leading academic institutions and biotechnology companies. This extensive validation provides confidence in the technology’s ability to improve lead selection processes and enhance preclinical success rates.
By enabling more informed candidate selection earlier in development pipelines, Avidion aims to reduce overall costs associated with cell therapy development whilst improving the likelihood of clinical success.
LUMICKS specialises in life science instrumentation for cancer research and fundamental biological mechanism investigation.
For more information, visit: www.lumicks.com
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