Mountain View, CA, July 1516, 2002--Picoliter Inc. announced today that it has
been awarded its first U.S. Patent (No. 6,416,164) entitled “Acoustic Ejection of Fluids Using Large F-number Focusing
Elements”. The patent broadly
claims a device and method for dispensing droplets using acoustic energy
generated by an external source and focused with a lens having a relatively
large "F-number”. The use of such
lenses allows for precise dispensing of droplets from containers of varying
size and shape, including "tall" containers in which the depth of the
fluid can be significantly greater than the width of the container. Examples of such containers include
commercial microplates, which are commonly used in high throughput screening,
diagnostics and life science research.
"The ability to move small amounts of
liquid is critical to the life science research and development,” said Elaine
J. Heron, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer.
“Picoliter Inc. has developed technology to enable extremely small
volume transfers from the high-density microplates including those with 384,
864, 1536 and 3456 wells. It works even when the fluid level is more than twice
as high as the well is wide, the format of most high density well plates.”
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies have
been moving towards higher density microplates to improve throughput and
decrease the cost of identifying potential drugs. One of the barriers to increasing density has been lack of a
reliable instrumentation for small volume transfers. The PicoliterTM liquid handling technology provides a
solution and is effective in narrow containers with high aspect ratios. With
the ability to rapidly transfer droplets as small as 0.1 picoliter (a picoliter
is a millionth of a millionth of a liter) and as large as one microliter, the
company’s technology has broad applications in high throughput biological
research and development.
Since all commonly used microwell plates share the same 85
by 128 millimeter footprint (approximately 3.5 by 5 inches), the wells of
high-density plates necessarily have very small diameters. For example, the wells of 1536-well plates
are less than 1.5 millimeters wide, making it difficult to insert a tube or pin into the well to draw out fluid
for a transfer. The newly patented
technology from Picoliter projects acoustic energy through the bottom of the
well and the solution to cause a droplet to be ejected from the fluid surface. What is particularly valuable is that
this process does not involve dipping anything into the well fluid, eliminating
any chance of fluid contamination.
Picoliter Inc. is a privately
held, development stage company located in Mountain View, CA. The company has developed a novel technology
for moving and analyzing small amounts of liquid using ultrasound energy. The PicoliterTM liquid handling
technology has broad applications in the life science tools market including
dispensing equipment, microarrays, and living cell transfer devices. The company’s initial products will enable
researchers to reduce the amount of expensive reagents used in drug discovery
and development assays by a factor of 10 to 100. In addition to the newly issued patent which represents
Picoliter's first issued patent in the United States, the company has over 25
patent applications pending with the USPTO as well as additional international
filings.
Members of the Picoliter management team have successfully brought a wide variety of products based on new technologies to market. The company includes individuals with experience in senior management, array/consumables manufacturing, business development, intellectual property protection and product development at Affymetrix, Applied Biosystems, Eastman Kodak, Incyte, International Paper, Molecular Dynamics, Packard Instruments, Symyx, and Xerox PARC.
Picoliter Inc. has received $27.1 million in two rounds of financing. Series A was provided by Delphi Ventures and Alloy Ventures, who are represented on the board of directors by Paul Auerbach, M.D. and Craig Taylor, respectively. The recently completed Series B was co-led by Abingworth and Sprout Group, each with long histories in supporting successful life science firms. Jonathan MacQuitty, Ph.D. of Abingworth and Vijay Lathi of Sprout Group have joined the company’s board of directors.
Contact Information
Elaine J. Heron, Ph.D.
CEO
Picoliter Inc.
231 S. Whisman Road
Mountain View, CA 94041
(650) 940-4582