# Customer Discovery for Ferrologix Digital Magnetic Sorting

> **NIH NIH R43** · FERROLOGIX, INC. · 2020 · $54,567

## Abstract

Project Summary
Treatment of immunological disorders with emerging treatments such as immunotherapy represent a growing
medical paradigm. To create potent and targeted therapies, defining the underlying immunological
mechanisms of action and is critical. Because of immunological complexity, measurements with single cell
resolution are essential as both diseases and treatments are often driven by small subpopulations of cells.
However, due to limitations with current cell isolation and analysis tools, precisely mapping these complex
interactions with single cell resolution is difficult and cost prohibitive to deploy at a scale conducive for high
throughput target discovery or streamlined clinical monitoring. Most high precision single cell isolation and
analysis tools, such as FACS or microfluidic platforms, are too low throughput and are difficult to integrate into
SBS formats for high throughput screening (HTS) workflows. Contrastingly, bulk cell sorting methods such as
MACS are easily integrated into HTS formats but cannot achieve single cell capture or analysis. The inherent
tradeoff of single cell precision and scalability impeads immunological R&D and clinical translation efforts.
Through primary market research interviews using I Corp techniques, researchers have voiced their
dissatisfaction with the current single cell isolation tools saying they are a “major roadblock in our work on
phenotypic analysis.”
We reasoned that a product that can integrate cell isolation and single cell analysis in an SBS well plate format
would alleviate these bottlenecks and accelerate clinical translation. Leveraging a core technology known as
ratcheting cytometry, the objective of this proposal to develop a “smart plate” which can achieve integrated cell
purification and arrangement into individual cells for single cell interrogation in SBS format. In preliminary
studies, ratcheting cytometry has demonstrated quantitative cell sorting capacity and capacity to self-assemble
cells into a single cell format. In phase I, ratcheting cytometry chips will be used to (1) purify CD 14+
monocytes into individual cells followed by (2) co-localization of commercially available magnetic ELISA beads
to measure TNF α secretion activity of single cells. Phase II will focus on scaling the ratcheting cytometry
cartridges and integration into SBS well plate format for HTS workflows.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10044395
- **Project number:** 3R43TR003048-01S1
- **Recipient organization:** FERROLOGIX, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Coleman Murray
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $54,567
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-08-20 → 2022-08-19

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10044395

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10044395, Customer Discovery for Ferrologix Digital Magnetic Sorting (3R43TR003048-01S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10044395. Licensed CC0.

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