Microfluidic platform "uses light patterns to pick up droplets and move them around"

Lightcast Discovery, whose next-generation microfluidic platform is set to revolutionise complex cell analysis, has raised £1.3million in seed financing to expand pilot studies.

Based at the Broers Building on JJ Thompson Avenue, Lightcast Discovery was launched on September 7. The company's automated cell manipulation platform offers "unrivalled flexibility and control, enabling complex and completely novel cell-based applications and workflows to be performed at scale and at speed". The novel factor is using software-generated light patterns to "precisely manipulate thousands of individual cell- and reagent-containing microdroplets independently and in parallel - live cells can be cultured, assayed, recovered and monitored at the single-cell level, pushing the current boundaries of complex cell analysis".

Lightcast was founded - and incorporated - by CEO Cameron Frayling and chief scientist Dr Tom Isaac in February.