In the old days, biomedical laboratory researchers spent endless hours staring into microscopes at samples from vials and Petri dishes. One by one they counted the cells impacted by a given agent, for instance, the number of T-cells producing cytokine in response to an experimental vaccine. Even research assistants don't want to do that grunt work anymore.

"It's boring. It's a crazy job and it's very straining," said Wolfgang Zeller, national sales manager for ImmunoBioSys, Inc. "When you count 100 spots in the bottom of a 6mm well and you have 96 of these wells it takes between one to two hours depending on how familiar you are with this job. When two people do it you have two different results; and when two people do it, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, you have four different results because you cannot be consistent."

Modern technology is coming to the rescue including high-tech instruments -- BIOREADER and BIOCOUNT -- from ImmunoBioSys, Inc. Founded in 2002, ImmunoBioSys is the North American distributor for German instrument maker BioSys. The parent company owns 25 percent of ImmunoBioSys.
"The difference with the BIOREADERs is that the machine is absolutely consistent and way faster than any human could do it," said Zeller who has headed ImmunoBioSys since November 2006.

"ImmunoBioSys was more or less a sleeping beauty from 2004 till 2007 because of lack of people here [in North America]," Zeller reports. "We sold the BIOREADERs here under another name." Today the company is ready to make an impact in its segment, going head to head with competitors CTL and Zeiss. "We have an absolute niche product. It's a very small niche but very important for research, especially cancer, HIV, and vaccine research," Zeller said. Bone marrow transplantation is another application.

Customers like the University of Colorado and the National Institutes of Health use ImmunoBioSys instruments to tackle important research projects. The systems interface with the research institutions' computer databases.

ImmonuBioSys offers two technologies. The BIOREADER is a fully automated system for analyzing smaller samples from a standard 96-well plate matrix. "You have tiny little 6mm holes on a plastic plate and if you would position those holes manually under a microscope that would be a lot of work. The BIOREADER is doing that automatically," Zeller explained. The company's other technology, the BIOCOUNT, uses a probe for larger samples.

"If you have higher throughput and small sample sizes, then the BIOREADER is the right choice. If you have very low throughput and big sample sizes, then the BIOCOUNT is the right choice." For instance, the NIH cancer research group uses the BIOCOUNT because they analyze bigger sample sizes. Those who do mainly elispots, a technique with small samples, use the BIOREADER.

Either way, the instruments have put ImmunoBioSys in position as the second-largest company here in the U.S. doing this kind of work (after CTL), according to Zeller. His company's systems are also able to complete with Zeiss on price.

For more information, go to www.elispotreader.com.

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