Participant 4. Johan Geysen (JG), PhD
MAIA Scientific, Belgium
A Harvard Bioscience Operating Company (NASDAQ: HBIO).
Company brief. We develop innovative instrumentation for high throughput cell biology, genomics and drug discovery. We also custom-build dedicated novel assay technology with cells, tissue and small animal model organisms (Ver Donck et al., 2001; Verhasselt et al., 1998). We provide access to our technology through contract R&D, participantships and collaboration.
Who we are. The founders collectively have over 30 years of drug discovery technology and R&D experience at Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson company. They operated at the forefront of high throughput screening since 1988 with rotational, parallel and serial high throughput screening systems. They successfully implemented several generation of high throughput platform technologies including all the up- & downstream logistics as well as data management. They pioneered at introducing COPAS flow sorting technology for model organism and developed novel solutions for industrial-scale biological imaging of unseen sensitivity and flexibility. A wide range of companies and divisions were their clients for which they designed biochemical, cellular and model organism assays, ran the compound screens and delivered hits or leads.
Motivation. MAIA Scientific fits the need of the consortium in different ways. MAIA Scientific invented and brought unique COPAS flow sorting instruments into the C. elegans research community and is further refining this technology and broadening the applicability. Two teams of the consortium are currently using COPAS technology and will apply it in context of this project. In addition, MIAS-2 is a novel ultra sensitive microscopic reader dedicated to the high throughput needs of genome centres and industrial screening labs. It features flexible hands-on sub-visual observation as well as 300 plate full automation (Ver Donck et al., 2003). eaZYX imaging software matches computer vision for structure and colour to the principles of human vision (Van Osta et al., 2002), leading to robust auto-focusing in extreme low light conditions (Geusebroek et al., 2000; WO0075709) and powerful, image capture, object recognition and image analysis. MIAS-2 and eaZYX are state-of-the-art products with wide applicability in the life sciences and high development potential. Through the consortium, MAIA Scientific know-how will contribute to exciting new genome-wide application of transposon technology and likewise, planning and execution of R&D opportunities in concert with leading participants in the C. elegans field will allow UBio-ESO to focus the development of its technology on the needs of the C. elegans community. COPAS Biosort instrumentation will be operational in the training & demonstration facilities of MAIA Scientific in Geel, Belgium. A MIAS-2 instrument with robotics is included in the budget of this project and will be operational starting day one of the project for the total duration of the project.
The platform technologies related to our activities are briefly described:
COPAS platforms for large particle flow sorting. This technology has replaced manual triage of combichem beads, model organisms and supracellular entities (at hundreds per hours) by accurate, high-speed and multi parametric analysis and sorting at speeds up to one million per day. COPAS comes with robotics to sort and dispense beads or living organisms into multi-well plates. The COPAS REFLEX unit will resample for (kinetic) analysis of beads or growing animal populations. The analytical capabilities of COPAS match today’s flow cytometers: size, extinction and multiple fluorescence. A unique feature is the COPAS PROFILER, that records axial fluorescent profiles. Positional changes or intensity of cells in the animal can be analyzed or used to sort populations.
MIAS-2, a novel automated microscopic imaging system. This system is dedicated to the high throughput needs of genome centres and industrial screening labs. MIAS will speed up the target identification, target validation, drug screening and hit evaluation process. Equipped with eaZYX imaging software, MIAS matches computer vision to human vision, leading to better-automated auto-focusing, image capture, object recognition and image analysis. MIAS comes fully featured to automate all steps in the microscopy process: plate handling, focusing, image capture-storage-analysis as well as (numerical) data output and cross-referencing to objects-in-image.
Application development. The MAIA Scientific team has broad experience in assay development for combichem beads, biology on beads, primary human cells and transformed cell lines, human tissues and tissue sections, small model organisms (C. elegans, Drosophila, zebra fish, Arabidopsis) and parasites. The team will build applications fitting customer needs, based on COPAS and MIAS technology platforms. The team will support the project while setting up a small model organism, cell biology or bead research program, platform technology or compound screening. For MIAS, the team will write the software that fully automates image-based research or compound screening project.
High throughput expertise. The company’s thorough understanding of the ‘high throughput’ process, including upstream logistics and data handling, helps identify opportunities to implement COPAS and or MIAS instrumentation. They will set up COPAS or MIAS as stand alone high throughput platforms or will support embedding COPAS and MIAS technology in existing high-throughput technology chain.
Relevant publications
1. Ver Donck K, Luc Bols, Van Osta P and Geysen J, 2003, Fast Assay Development for Multimode Microscopy Screening with a flexible HTS reader, submitted for presentation, MIPTEC 2003, Basel Switzerland.
2. Van Osta P, Geusebroek JM, Ver Donck K, Bols L, Geysen J, ter Haar Romeny BM, 2002, The principles of scale space applied to structure and colour in light microscopy, Proc. Royal Microsc. Soc., 37: 161-166.
3. Ver Donck K, Maillet I, Roelens I, Bols L., Van Osta P, Geysen J, Bogaert T, 2001, High density C. elegans screening: an automated phenotype analysis platform, applied to the unc-53 (Steerin) pathway, abstract at the 2001 International Worm meeting, (relevant personal communication)
4. Geusebroek JM, Cornelissen F, Smeulders AM, Geerts H, 2000, Robust auto-focusing in microscopy, Cytometry, 36, 1-9 and WO0075709.
5. Verhasselt P., Vandecraen M., Maertens L., Luyten W., Geysen J. & Bogaert T., 1998, Human homologue of UNC-53 protein of C. elegans, W9963080, pp 142, 17 figures (patent).