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Discovering the future of cell research
What industry does OLS specialize in, and how did the partnership with IDEA Bio-Medical come to life?
AF: OLS’ main area of focus is cell research, and we are striving to be the chosen partner for our customers in cell research. OLS is based in Bremen, Germany, and is a family-owned company. Though OLS has existed in some form since 2004, the last few years have allowed OLS to carve out our niche in cell research.
At OLS, we manufacture our own products and instrumentation, such as the CASY Cell Counter & Analyzer, which is globally distributed, as well as the CERO 3D Incubator & Bioreactor, which is also manufactured in-house and distributed globally. Today, we work closely with IDEA Bio-Medical to find companies within the field that are keen and able to image what we culture in our CERO.
How are OLS’ products cultured?
Andreas Friese, COO at OLS: At OLS, we culture our products in-house all the way from cells into spheroids, and organoids. OLS cultures stem cells, and even tissue pieces. Our teams believe that the Hermes WiScan system is an incredibly innovative, fast tool that facilitates the next generation of high content imaging in the market.
What is the focus of IDEA Bio-Medical, and how does this align with the ethos and focus of OLS?
YG: IDEA Bio-Medical is an Israeli company. We specialize in automated imaging and automated analysis for the cell biology field. We launched our flagship product, the Hermes WiScan, about ten years ago. Our market is primarily researchers doing cell biology within academia and drug discovery pharma companies doing compound screening as well as biotech companies.
What is the Hermes imaging system?
YG: The Hermes imaging system is essentially a platform for the researcher – or anyone who is doing life science research and wants to visualize and quantitate whatever is happening within the cells, at the cellular level.
The system is capable of scanning multiwell plates and slides in multiple fluorescence channels and bright field channels. It then automatically analyzes all these images and extracts quantitative, meaningful information from those samples. This can be applied to a range of applications, including cancer research, virology, and immunology – essentially, the system supports anything related to the field of cell biology.
What are the features of the Hermes imaging system?
YG: We are particularly excited about several new features in the Hermes imaging system that we have recently launched. One of the new features is in the zebrafish area and provides a full solution for zebrafish screening in a high-content, automated fashion, covering the image acquisition as well as the analysis.
The analysis is unique in that it is a deep-learning AI-based analysis that discretely segments all the compartments within the fish, along with the fish outline, in a bright field, non-labeled manner. This analysis encompasses a broad range of research when analyzing zebrafish, which is now an emerging model for cell biology.
Another exciting feature is our new automated oil immersion module. Essentially, it allows for fully-automated screening of multiwell plates with oil immersion without any need for user intervention. There is no longer any need to manually work with the oil, but the user still benefits from the high resolution and the brighter contrast with lower, shorter time gaps.
Essentially, the system increases the throughput without requiring the user to do anything; the process is undertaken automatically. Terabytes of data are being acquired, analyzed, quantified, and documented automatically – all the user needs to do is load the samples into the system to begin the process. The other benefit is that all the data is analyzed in a non-biased manner, which is vital when doing scientific research. Rather than a human undertaking the segmentation, the system gives the user the real picture of what is going on in their sample.
How will the combined expertise of both organizations be used to benefit the customers of both OLS and IDEA Bio?
AF: Essentially, all the significant research that IDEA Bio has done over the past few years to develop this AI-driven instrumentation for high-content screening in the zebrafish will now be used for the customers from OLS Omni Life Sciences in the areas of cell research, cell biology, and 3D cell culture to perform accurate top-of-the-range analysis on 3D structures.
In other words, it is an ideal marriage between the two organizations: OLS Omni Life Science who develops the culture systems for many of these cell structures, and these will then be analyzed accurately and rapidly by the instrumentation from IDEA Bio-Medical.
About The Speakers
Yael Enzer Geva
Head of Operations at IDEA Bio-Medical
Yael is a biotechnology engineer and has been part of IDEA Bio-Medical team since 2015. Yael has vast experience supporting sales and marketing of scientific lab equipment, automated microscopy and image analysis software platforms.
Dr. Andreas Fries
COO at OLS OMNI life sciences
Andreas holds a PHD in life sciences and is the COO of OLS Omni Life sciences since 2018. Andreas has extensive experience of over a decay in the life science industry, leading sales teams of cell research equipment and cell culture devices.