Berkeley Lights, Inc., a life sciences tools company, today announced the launch of the Beacon Select^™, the company's new optofluidic system for cell line development (CLD). The Beacon Select builds upon the same cutting-edge technology offered by the original Beacon system launched in 2017 that currently has an installed base of more than 130 systems globally. The Beacon Select offers customers optofluidic and NanoPen^® chamber technology and propriety CLD applications, but with the optimum level of features to meet the research and budgetary needs for new market segment customers.

Beacon Select is a two-chip, single-cell optofluidic system for CLD that enables scientists to clone, culture, assay and select top clones in a single run on a single platform and ideally suited for small- to mid-sized biopharma and CDMOs/CROs. This contrasts with the initial four-chip Beacon system enabled for antibody discovery and CLD, geared toward high-campaign usage from large biopharma and established CDMOs/CROs. The Beacon Select enables high throughput cloning, screening, and selection of top-performing CHO cell lines in just days using the Opto^® CLD workflow. In addition, the Opto^® Assure Assays enable users to select clones with favorable product quality attributes within five days of cloning to reduce overall bioprocessing costs, improve the probability of success, and further shorten timelines by selecting higher quality clones for scale up.

To increase customer accessibility and affordability, Berkeley Lights will offer Beacon Select with different purchase options including capital placement, lease, or reagent rental. The two-chip Beacon Select list price will be approximately half of the current Beacon system, which makes the technology ideal for new users that do not need the full Beacon capacity. In addition, this lower price point allows existing CLD Beacon customers to increase throughput and existing Antibody Discovery Beacon customers to access CLD applications.

"Berkeley Lights is enhancing its approach to the market with the introduction of a more flexible configuration and pricing models that is focused on customers' total cost of ownership," said Siddhartha Kadia, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Berkeley Lights.

The Beacon Select is the first in a series of new platform launches that provide lower barriers to entry for customers to acquire our game-changing technology focused on cell line development. By the second half of 2023, we will also offer Beacon Quest an optofluidic system specialized for academic research institutes and translational research centers."

Siddhartha Kadia, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Berkeley Lights

Additional features and benefits of the Beacon Select

The Beacon Select system can:

• Select clones with higher titers than traditional methods
• Increase throughput by 2x while reducing cell line development timelines by up to 50%
• Achieve cloning efficiencies 5x greater than FACS and 10x greater than limiting dilution, while recovering clones with >99% monoclonality assurance
• Utilize the new Berkeley Lights' Custom Productivity Assay that enables selection of clones secreting a wide variety of molecules, including antibodies, protein-based vaccines, enzymes, fusion proteins, antibody fragments, and cytokines. This capability allows a wide variety of projects to be completed on a single instrument.