This July, Altium International joined our partner Cytosurge for the North American leg of their Same-Cell Roadshow, a two-week tour that brought FluidFM® technology and the OMNIUM platform to some of the most active research communities in the US and Canada.
As Cytosurge's exclusive distributor for the US and Canada, we were proud to support Dr. Tobias Beyer, Cytosurge's CSO and Head of International Business Development, as he introduced researchers to a new way of thinking about single-cell biology.
Why Same-Cell Biology Matters
For years, single-cell research has faced a fundamental trade-off: to measure a cell's molecular state, you usually have to destroy it. That means you never get to see what the cell would have become.
Cytosurge's approach changes that. With the FluidFM Nanosyringe, researchers can take a picoliter-scale RNA sample from a living cell's cytoplasm, pair it with live-cell imaging, and return to the same cell later. The result is a connected picture of:
- Transcriptome: what the cell is expressing
- Morphology: how the cell looks and changes
- Behavior: what the cell does and becomes over time
This is the core idea behind Live-seq and Same-Cell Biology: perturb, measure and track the same living cell, rather than inferring its story from snapshots of many different ones.
Philadelphia: Fox Chase Cancer Center
Our first stop together was a Lunch & Learn at Fox Chase Cancer Center, hosted in the Reimann Auditorium and organized by Manna Ahmed, MD, and Johnathan Whetstine, PhD, of the Genomics Resource Facility.
Barrie Rogers from our team joined Tobias to meet a mixed audience of cancer researchers and interns. The session covered how FluidFM OMNIUM brings together nanofluidics and atomic force microscopy for precise, minimally disruptive single-cell work, including:
- Live-seq for longitudinal transcriptomics
- Targeted single-cell perturbation
- Mechanobiology applications
Toronto: University of Toronto, Donnelly Centre
In Canada, the roadshow visited the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at the University of Toronto. The event was organized by Shamini Ayyadhury, PhD, and the PANORAMICS – A Vision Inc. team, whose Spatial Nexus Program brings together Toronto's single-cell and spatial biology community.
It was a meaningful stop for Tobias, who spoke in the same room where his lab meetings were held during his postdoc years in the Wrana Lab at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute.
Boston: SCP2026 and the MIT Koch Institute
Boston was the busiest leg of the trip.
SCP2026 at Northeastern University
Barrie and Tobias ran the Cytosurge booth for two days at SCP2026, the field's flagship single-cell proteomics conference, organized by Prof. Nikolai Slavov. Conversations at the booth highlighted where the technology is heading next: a workflow that feeds FluidFM OMNIUM single-cell samples directly into mass-spectrometry sample prep is already in development, extending Live-seq from transcriptomics toward same-cell proteomics.
MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
The roadshow wrapped up with a Lunch & Learn in the Luria Auditorium, organized by Tarek Fadel, PhD. The talk brought together the main themes of the tour:
- Longitudinal transcriptomic analysis of the same living cell
- Targeted single-cell delivery for perturbation studies
- Gentle isolation of rare cells for spatial and multi-omic analysis
The team also met with Mushriq Al-Jazrawe, PhD, and the High Throughput Sciences Core to explore how FluidFM could complement existing core facility workflows.
Click here for a sneak peek at the event's atmosphere!
What We Took Away
Across very different audiences, from cancer centers to core facilities to a proteomics conference, the same question kept coming up: what if measuring a cell no longer meant losing it?
The response confirmed what we see every day working with Cytosurge. Researchers are ready for tools that let them follow living cells over time and connect molecular changes to real outcomes.
Work With Us
Whether your work focuses on single-cell transcriptomics, proteomics, spatial biology or multi-omics, the Altium team can help you explore how FluidFM OMNIUM and Live-seq could fit into your lab.
Contact us to schedule a conversation, request a demo, or learn more about Same-Cell Biology in the US and Canada ([email protected]).
