# A Uniquely Scalable Approach to Single Cell Sequencing for the Development of Next Generation Cell Therapies

> **NIH NIH R43** · SANSIMEON, INC · 2024 · $399,369

## Abstract

Immunotherapies (including CAR-T cell therapies) are wonder drugs when they work, but the
response rates of today’s immunotherapies are only 15-20% and therapy costs remain
prohibitively high for mass adoption. Single-cell sequencing (SC-seq) is becoming the preferred
tool for immune profiling to map a patient’s adaptive immune response, and to readout phenotypic
changes that result from CRISPR based gene edits at the single cell level. However, the full
potential of SC-seq based CRISPR screens and immune repertoire profiling for the development
of next generation therapeutics requires a 10-fold to 100-fold increase in cell throughput relative
to current platforms. Upcoming expiration of Illumina’s core IP re-ignited competition in US & EU
markets. The resulting re-acceleration in the drop of DNA sequencing costs (6-fold price reduction
in 2023 vs. Illumina’s 2022 pricing) makes SC-seq of 10 million cells affordable today (20-30
million cells in ~3 years and 100 million cells in 6 years), but existing methods for SC-seq do not
support throughput beyond 1 million cells per experiment. Proposed alternatives are scalable, but
trade-offs in performance and ease-of-use make them unsuitable for translational research.
Sansimeon’s approach uniquely scales SC-seq with throughput >100M cells, while retaining the
ease-of-use and necessary cell capture efficiency for high-throughput applications in translational
research. Our platform incorporates a technology for in-line sample debulking, which was
previously commercialized for applications in cell therapy manufacturing and rare cell isolation.
Sansimeon’s ability to sequence >100 million single cells directly from crude & complex samples
(such as whole blood or bone marrow aspirates), with a single-step automated workflow, makes
the platform ideally suited for high-throughput applications in translational research.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10822508
- **Project number:** 1R43HG013446-01
- **Recipient organization:** SANSIMEON, INC
- **Principal Investigator:** Philipp Stefan Spuhler
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $399,369
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-02-23 → 2026-02-22

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10822508

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10822508, A Uniquely Scalable Approach to Single Cell Sequencing for the Development of Next Generation Cell Therapies (1R43HG013446-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10822508. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*