Scanogen

I came across the Scanogen technology, and it just seemed too fun not to write about. The approach is well described on their website:

Tether a bead to a target and long probe. Stick that on a surface and then watch the bead shift around under flow!

They have recently received $2.9M to pursue the approach.

First Thoughts

Without digging much further some immediate thoughts come to mind:

• The approach is single molecule which potentially means simpler sample prep.

• It doesn’t need a single molecule readout, rather imaging a large bead.

• Potential for multiplexing using different colored beads. Maybe up to Stilla-levels.

• Approach seems related to the nCounter (long probes). Does that mean long hybridisation times?

Patents

To find more data, I went hunting in patents. Some of the data here looks quite impressive: