Novo Nordisk purchases Berkeley Lights’ Beacon Optofluidic platform for cell line development and antibody discovery

Berkeley Lights, Inc. and Novo Nordisk announced that Novo Nordisk has purchased the Beacon® Optofluidic platform to accelerate workflows in cell line development and to use the platform for future protein and antibody discovery.

“We are committed to raising the height of our innovation by adopting new technologies that make drug discovery and development more efficient. The implementation of the platform from Berkeley Lights is in line with our ambition to drive a faster and more efficient path towards clinical development of lead candidates by increased investment in automation and digital capabilities,” said Lars Fogh Iversen, senior vice president, Global Research Technologies, Novo Nordisk.

The Beacon platform reduces the extensive resources typically required to generate a cell line for commercial production by allowing for parallel screening, maintenance and analysis of thousands of cells. With the platform’s fully integrated and programmable workflow, the time expenditure for screening thousands of cells can be consolidated from 12 weeks to five days. Automating this process and combining it with the variety of assays supported by the platform increases efficiencies, reduces overall costs, and provides rich analytical insights into clone characteristics that are not currently available with traditional techniques for cell line development.

“Drug discovery and development requires continuous improvement and innovation progress to drive efficiency and outcomes. Berkeley Lights’ digital cell biology platform offers the diversity, applicability and agility to meet these demands,” said Andy Last, chief commercial officer at Berkeley Lights. “We are pleased to have Novo Nordisk join our growing list of top pharma companies adopting the Beacon platform to propel cell line development and ultimately, to bring critical therapeutics to patients sooner.”