PixelGen Molecular Pixelation method for single-cell spatial proteomics by NGS sequencing
And who should be worried about this
A Molecular Pixelation method that was presented in Feb 2023 at AGBT, but now there is a preprint hot off the press:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543770v1
The company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, as many spatial biology companies seem to do, and they have raised a total of $6M so far according to Crunchbase.
The headlines of the Molecular Pixelation technology are:
Spatial Biology Proteomics output: similar to what 10X Genomics Xenium, NanoString CosMX, Vizen, Akoya and many other companies do, although many can do both RNA/Protein readout.
Up to 76 different proteins assayed in one go (76 mAbs). This could be growing in number in the future.
Imaging instrument-free: no imaging needed, simply do the 3-4 step flowing of the mAbs cocktail, Pixel-A, Pixel-B and some clever molecular biology, and out comes an NGS library ready for sequencing. The image is produced computationally from the NGS data.
It provides the 3D spatial location of the assayed proteins (from binding of the mAbs), as well as relative quantitation.
Only cell-surface proteins(?): that was the announcement at AGBT, and the preprint shows examples like CD20 and CD3, which are cell surface proteins. Unsure if this can be extended to intracellular proteins in the future.
Only intact cells floating in a cell soup(?): the preprint doesn’t mention “biopsy” even once, which could mean the way biopsies are fixated may not inhibit the antibody binding, but may inhibit the gap-fill ligation reaction. But the company says they believe their “Molecular Pixelation technology will become an essential tool for spatial biology in cells and tissues”.
If all that’s promised about this method comes true, then this is the first described method to identify relative localization of proteins in single cells without the use of expensive imaging with expensive microscopy equipment.
Behind the curtain, I hypothesize who should be worried about this, and who should not. I’ll mention TXG 0.00%↑ 10X Genomics, NSTG 0.00%↑ NanoString, AKYA 0.00%↑ Akoya Bio, VizGen, Resolve Bio, Veranome, Lunaphore, etc.