Silicon Biosystems is a venture-backed start-up company based in Bologna, Italy. We have developed a set of patented solutions for label-free cell separation, single cell separation, cell detection, based on miniaturized biochip technologies.

Our technology allows researchers to carry out experiments otherwise impossible to perform interrogating thousands of individual cells with unprecedented parallelism and selectivity.

	Smartslide System

The main applications of our technology include non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, cancer diagnostics and therapy (such as tumor characterization and staging, or innovative cell therapies), regenerative medicine (stem cells) as well as basic research on individual cells.

We have developed two product lines, called DEPArray^TM and SmartSlide^TM

DEPArrayTM

The DEParray^TM is a disposable device implemented on a silicon chip by means of microelectronic fabrication technologies, targeted at individual-cell biology. Few microliters of sample, with anything from just few to hundreds of thousands cells, can be injected into the chip. The chip implements an array of more than 100,000 20µm x 20µm dielectrophoretic cages, which are able to trap individual cells suspended in the sample. Cells are kept in stable levitation without contact to device surfaces. Under automated software control, all these traps can be simultaneously displaced in order to move along trapped particles and to implement various different protocols.

DEPArray^TM make possible individual-cell sorting, with uncompromised purity, automation and ease of use.

It is also a versatile platform. For example, cell-cell interaction studies with fine control and resolution can be orchestrated on the chip. Furhter, one can also sort the cells depending on the outcome of those interactions.

SmartSlideTM

Smartslide Chip

SmartSlide^TM chips are ideal for the manipulation of cell populations in microliter samples, especially when dealing with tiny amount of cells.

The main application of SmartSlide^TM is the label-free separation of cells. Separation is based on dielectrophoretic force differences among cells, stemming for example on the cell physiological conditions (e.g. live/dead yeast separation), or other physical properties such as size (e.g. sperm/ epithelial cells separation).
Other applications of this technology include centrifugation-free washing of cells, and reagent sampling, combining excellent yields even with small cell loads and tiny amount of reagents.

Silicon Biosystems and Nano2Life

Nano2Life represents for us an opportunity to interact with a leading edge network of researchers to develop new collaborations and get feedback on the needs from this highly qualified community.