• New products and partnerships further accelerate and simplify identification of actionable spatial signatures, creating unprecedented opportunities to improve patient outcomes
  
• Ready-to-use panels, turnkey software solutions, and instrument enhancements put more power in the hands of spatial biology researchers

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Dec. 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Akoya Biosciences, Inc., (Nasdaq: AKYA), The Spatial Biology Company^®, today highlighted the latest wave of spatial biology innovations, new products, and partnerships that further accelerate and simplify spatial signature discovery and validation, at its second annual Spatial Day event. Company leadership and leading scientists came together to discuss advancements in spatial biology and the progress towards delivering spatial signatures to advance the field of precision medicine.

Akoya’s flagship platforms, PhenoCycler^®-Fusion and PhenoImager^® HT, enable a deeper understanding of biology, disease progression, and response to therapy through rapid and scalable multiomic mapping of tissue architecture.

At this year’s Spatial Day, the company introduced a suite of ready-to-use PhenoCode™ panels to accelerate the adoption and utilization of the company’s spatial phenotyping solutions for discovery and translational research. The company also announced PhenoCycler-Fusion platform improvements to double throughput and an expanded list of software and data analysis partners to provide customers with a range of flexible and fit-for-purpose data analysis solutions.

“With the launch of our PhenoCycler-Fusion system, we set a new standard for accelerating spatial biology at scale, allowing meaningful conclusions to be drawn from increasingly larger and more complex cohorts of samples,” said Brian McKelligon, Chief Executive Officer of Akoya Biosciences. “With our new PhenoCode Discovery and Signature Panels, rapidly expanding and powerful options for data analysis, and instrument enhancements, we deliver a higher standard enabling the most productive and scalable spatial biology workflow, putting even more power into the hands of our customers.”

The following new product introductions to Akoya’s end-to-end spatial biology solutions address specific requirements of discovery, translational, and clinical researchers.

PhenoCode Ready-to-Use Panels to Accelerate Spatial Discovery and Signature Development – To further accelerate system utilization, Akoya is introducing a series of ready-to-use panels for use across the entire portfolio. Launched at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting this year, the PhenoCode Signature Panels for the PhenoImager instruments are based on a novel barcoded chemistry and include markers for phenotyping the tumor microenvironment and immune status. The customizable panels provide translational and clinical researchers with a ready-made solution to rapidly advance biomarker programs. Additional PhenoCode Signature Panels will be announced and introduced in 2H 2023. In 1H 2023, PhenoCode Discovery Panels will be introduced for the PhenoCycler-Fusion system. These discovery panels will focus on providing comprehensive coverage of key biomarkers in oncology and inflammatory disease. Similar to the PhenoCode Signature Panels, additional PhenoCode Discovery Panels will be introduced in 2H 2023, expanding into additional therapeutic areas such as neuroscience. The company also detailed the rollout of a co-marketed offering with Bio-Techne in 1H 2023 and the introduction of Akoya’s spatial transcriptomics offering in 2H 2023.

An Ecosystem of Software Partners to Simplify Data Analysis – The growing adoption of spatial biology across all market segments is catalyzing development of a rapidly expanding list of organizations focused on developing data analysis and software solutions. To capitalize on this, and for the benefit of the company’s customers, Akoya continues to expand on its current ecosystem of software partnerships to now include OracleBio, Indica Labs, and Enable Medicine. These are in addition to Akoya’s long-standing partnerships with both Visiopharm and PathAI. The result is a suite of tools and services that can enable turnkey analysis of whole-slide, high-plex data to meet the needs of all customer segments.

The key to enabling these partnerships is Akoya’s standardization and compression of data generated on the company’s platforms. Spatial data generated by the PhenoCycler-Fusion and PhenoImager HT platforms are compressed into a manageable size and a standardized file format, termed QPTIFF, for downstream storage and analysis. This is done in real time on the instrument and utilizes a proprietary algorithm that reduces file sizes from terabytes to gigabytes. By reducing file sizes, researchers can easily manage their data and eliminate lengthy post-processing steps, allowing them to confidently scale-up spatial discovery efforts with larger panels and study sizes. With this suite of software partners, Akoya meets the diverse data analysis needs of discovery, translational, and clinical researchers.

Instrument Enhancements for Higher Throughput and Automation – New enhancements to the PhenoCycler-Fusion system enable a doubling of the platform’s throughput. The PhenoCycler-Fusion 2.0 workflow includes a multi-slide carrier which enables labs to process twice as many samples per week and will be available in 1H 2023. The upgrade also enables automation of Bio-Techne’s RNAscope^® assay for visualization and spatial detection of single RNA molecules.

A recording of Akoya’s Spatial Day Event can be accessed at akoyabio.com/spatialday.

About Akoya Biosciences

As The Spatial Biology Company®, Akoya Biosciences’ mission is to bring context to the world of biology and human health through the power of spatial phenotyping. The company offers comprehensive single-cell imaging solutions that allow researchers to phenotype cells with spatial context and visualize how they organize and interact to influence disease progression and response to therapy. Akoya offers a full continuum of spatial phenotyping solutions to serve the diverse needs of researchers across discovery, translational and clinical research: PhenoCode™ Panels and PhenoCycler®, PhenoImager® Fusion and PhenoImager HT Instruments. To learn more about Akoya, visit www.akoyabio.com.

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Priyam Shah
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Akoya Biosciences
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Media Contact:
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