WHEN EVERY CELL MATTERS
Identify cancer cells
that survive treatment.
Target the ones that
drive relapse.
SingleCell Biotechnology's functional assay platform identifies and profiles the rare subpopulations of tumor cells responsible for cancer recurrence — at single-cell resolution.
~ 1%
of tumor cells survive treatment and cause relapse
These outliers drive every relapse — and are invisible to current tools.
> 90%
of new cancer drugs fail in development
Most were never tested against the cells that survive treatment.
01
THE FLAW
Current methods measure the average — not what matters
Standard drug efficacy assays rely on population-level readouts — averaging the growth and survival behavior of millions of cells. This approach only works when the population is homogeneous and behaves as one.
​
02
THE BIOLOGY
Cancer is one of the most heterogeneous systems in biology
Within a single tumor, cells behave differently, respond differently, and survive differently. Averaging across them doesn't just miss the outliers that drive relapse — it actively hides them.
​
03
THE CONSEQUENCE
The survivors are invisible — until they drive relapse
The ~1% of cells that resist treatment are statistical outliers in the distribution. Population-level assays report them as noise. They are not noise - they are the disease.
​
04
THE REQUIREMENT
Fighting heterogeneity requires looking at every cell individually
A different approach is needed — one that sees the full distribution, not just the average, and focuses on the surviving outliers to unmask what population-level methods conceal.
​
05
OUR ANSWER
A platform to unmask single-cell heterogeneity at precision and scale
Measure every cell individually — capturing the full distribution of behavior across thousands of single cells per experiment — so the outliers that drive relapse can no longer hide.
​
Meet the first platform built to track,
identify and profile the cells that survive treatment.
Our platform is built around three phenotypic assays that capture the hallmark behaviors of treatment-resistant tumor cells — the biological mechanisms directly responsible for cancer recurrence and mortality.
Each assay is designed for high-content, high-throughput data collection, enabling drug screening, target identification, and disease analysis at single-cell resolution.
PHENOTYPE 01
Clonogenicity
The ability of a tumor cell to proliferate continuously and regenerate a full colony — one surviving cell is enough to restart the disease.
​​​​
Tumor regeneration capacity
PHENOTYPE 02
Migration
The ability of a tumor cell to invade surrounding tissue and travel to distant sites in the body. This is the biological mechanism behind metastasis — the spread of cancer beyond the original tumor that makes it life-threatening.
Invasion and metastasis
PHENOTYPE 03
Dormancy
The ability of a tumor cell to remain alive but non-dividing — evading both treatment and detection. Dormant cells can persist silently for months, making cancer appear cured when it is not.
​
Silent persistence and late relapse
PLATFORM COMPONENTS
Microwell Plate
Captures clonogenicity and dormancy simultaneously at ~3,000 single-cell datapoints per well.
Microchannel Plate
Captures cells in 3D migration state to analyze speed, invasion, and morphological changes at ~400 cells per well.
From samples to molecular target - in one integrated platform.
01
SAMPLES
Cells derived from a patient biopsy or patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model are prepared and loaded into the assay platform. Compatible with glioblastoma, breast cancer, and other solid tumors.
02
IMAGE DATA ACQUISITION
Cells are imaged over time across the microwell and microchannel array plates, generating high-content image data at single-cell resolution. Compatible with standard 96-well plate imaging systems.
03
IDENTIFYING TREATMENT RESISTANT SURVIVORS
Our machine learning and computer vision based automatic image analysis pipeline classifies every cell's behavior across thousands of spatially indexed positions — distinguishing dormant survivors, clonogenic outliers, and migrating cells from the majority that respond to treatment.
04
PRECISION RECOVERY OF CELLS OF INTEREST
Using spatial coordinates generated by the analysis pipeline, cells in specific outcome categories are extracted directly from the plate — enabling downstream molecular analysis of precisely the cells that survived treatment.
05
FROM PHENOTYPE TO MOLECULAR TARGET
Recovered cells undergo multi-omic profiling on standard platforms such as Parse Biosciences or Illumina, linking each cell's phenotypic behavior directly to its molecular state. The result is a per-patient resistance map — connecting dormancy, clonogenicity, and migration to the molecular targets that drive them
The Team
Karoliina Stefanius, PhD
President
Bryan Presley
Co-Founder & Director of Engineering
Shiska Raut, M.S.
Machine Learning & Computer Vision Engineer
Board of Directors
Azam Anwar, MD
Chairman & Co-Founder
Douglas Krohn, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Matthew Head
Board Member
Scientific Advisors
Digant Davé, PhD
Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor
Core IP Inventor, Professor, UT Arlington
Robert Bachoo, MD, PhD
Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor
Core IP Inventor, Neuro-Oncologist, UT Southwestern Medical Center
Elizabeth Maher, MD, PhD
Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor
Neuro-Oncologist, UT Southwestern Medical Center
News &
Traction
2022
Company Founded
Launched at BioLabs, Pegasus Park. Licensed core technology from UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Nov 2023
$2.5M CPRIT Grant Awarded
One of 6 companies selected from 95 applicants. Funds platform optimization for GBM drug development.
Mar 2026
Reproducibility Data Published
Reproducibility data for the clonogenic assay published as a preprint on bioRxiv — demonstrating consistent single-cell measurements across experimental replicates.
Apr 2026
Data Presented @ AACR 2026
Platform demonstrated high-throughput single-cell assay linking clonal growth phenotypes to molecular profiles across multiple GBM models.
Work with Us
We are actively seeking partnerships with pharma companies, CROs, and research organizations focused on developing more effective treatments for cancer and cancer recurrence. If any of the following describes you, we want to hear from you.
Drug
Discovery
&
Target
Identification
CRO
Services
&
Drug
Candidate
Validation
Research
Collaborations &
Academic
Partnerships
Partners
CONTACT US
Connect with us on Linkedin
SingleCell Biotechnology, Inc.
3060 Pegasus Park Dr.
Dallas, TX 75247
Pegasus Park — Biotech Hub of Dallas