Giving You The Edge

Recovering target-specific antibodies and T cells through powerful single cell assays driven by Saber’s ultra-high throughput instruments and data analytics

Screen

Screen millions of single cells, sorting on function

Link

Link functional phenotype & transcriptome at single cell resolution

Understand

Multi-omic data mining centered on understanding cell function

About Saber Bio

We bring together more than 10 years of scientific and industrial experience with single cell assays using droplet-based microfluidics technologies. We convert this experience into two cutting edge, ultra-high throughput single cell benchtop instruments for immune cell profiling and cell line development.

Our ambition is to enable users to extract the maximum information from a single cell by screening millions of cells, one by one and linking their function to their genotype. Our instruments will make it possible to find and develop high quality functional antibodies and T cells at unprecedented speed and precision.

Novel assays are also in development, applicable to other cell types and designed to enable informed (pre) clinical decision making.

Our Team

Fred Dom

Fred Dom

Fred Dom

Chief Executive Officer

Fred Dom is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in private capital investment, setting up and growing biotech companies. Fred’s passion is to bring new science and technologies to the market. Before starting Saber Bio, Fred was co-founder and CEO at HiFiBiO Therapeutic that developed a single-cell droplet-based microfluidics platform for antibody drug discovery. He brings to Saber his experience in helping HiFiBiO raise over $180 million to advance a pipeline of therapeutic antibodies making use of the power of droplet-based microfluidics and closing multiple biotech and big pharma collaborations. Fred holds a master’s degree in economics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Annabelle Gérard

Annabelle Gérard

Annabelle Gérard

Chief Technology Officer

Annabelle Gérard is a cellular and molecular biologist with close to 20 years of experience. She turned technology developer for almost 10 years. She joined HiFiBiO in 2013 as first employee, and since then led the single cell screening platform for high precision and accuracy T and B cells screening and recovery, both from a phenotypic and Omics angle. As Senior Director of External Innovation at HiFiBiO she led the partnership programs with KOLs in top academic institutions, as well as biotech and big Pharma companies. She is co-inventor of more than 10 patent applications covering methods, instruments and applications in engineering, cellular and molecular biology. She defended her PhD 15 years ago from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) and completed a post-doctoral research in infectious disease at the Cochin Institute, Paris, France.

Adam Woolfe

Adam Woolfe

Adam Woolfe

Director, Head of Bioinformatics

Adam Woolfe is a bioinformatician with more than 20 years experience in algorithm development, computational genomics and immunoinformatics in both academia and industry. Before joining Saber, Adam worked at HiFiBiO since 2014 and led the development of the bioinformatics server infrastructure and software tools for analysis of high-throughput sequencing of single-cell antibody and TCR data from the ground up. He obtained a PhD in Comparative Genomics from Cambridge, UK and did postdoctoral work at NIH, USA and Curie Institute, Paris, France. He has worked in research on subjects as diverse as ultra-conservation in vertebrate genomes, prediction of disease variants that disrupt gene splicing and epigenetic contributions to cancer.

Félix Lebois

Félix Lebois

Félix Lebois

Principal Scientist, Product Development

Félix Lebois has over ten years of experience in Research and Development. After completing his PhD in biophysics, he worked for five years at the research centre of Saint-Gobain in Paris, where he led several projects for the characterization of industrial processes for glass manufacturing. In 2018 Félix returned to biophysics and the biotechnology sector, and joined Fluidic Analytics, a Cambridge-based start-up that develops tools for in-solution protein characterization. As a Microfluidics Scientist, he contributed to the technology development for the company’s next generation of instruments, first in Zürich (Switzerland) and then in Cambridge (UK). He joined Saber in 2021 as the company’s first employee, where he oversees instrument development. Félix graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 2008. He holds an MS in Physics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie and a PhD in Physics from Université Paris Diderot.

Laurence Young

Laurence Young

Laurence Young

Principle Scientist, Optics

Laurence Young is a physicist and engineer with a passion for developing life sciences instrumentation. Prior to joining Saber Bio, Laurie worked for 6 years at Fluidic Analytics, Cambridge, where he was involved in the design and development of microfluidics lab instrumentation products from prototype through to small volume production. As Lead Engineering Physicist, he also led optics R&D into ultra-sensitive detection methods for the company’s next-generation product pipeline. He has a Masters of Electronic Engineering from University College London, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering and Biophysics from the University of Cambridge.

Pooja Joshi

Pooja Joshi

Pooja Joshi

Principal Scientist, Assay Development

Pooja Joshi is a PhD in Pharmacological Sciences and has more than 11 years of experience in drug discovery involving the identification of novel therapeutics for rare and neurologic diseases. She joined Sanofi in 2019 and was responsible for managing pre-clinical projects in in-vitro pharmacology, holding responsibilities for strategy and prioritization, and participated in external innovation projects with academic institutes. She associates herself with biomarker screening from patient’s PBMCs using single cell approaches. After gaining experience in cellular biology and microparticle biology during her PhD from University of Milan, Italy, she did post-doctoral research in INSERM UMR1141, Paris, where she worked on developing assays in the field of molecular biology.

Pierre Khouray

Pierre Khouray

Pierre Khoury

Senior Engineer, Head of Software Development

Pierre Khoury is a software engineer and project manager with over ten years of experience creating and building systems to advance science and better people’s well-being.
His entrepreneurial mindset has led him to work on a variety of projects. He gained an acute intuition on all aspects of software development, from commercial application development and quality assurance in California, to cloud architecture and regulatory planning in the UK. Head of Software at Saber Bio since January 2022, Pierre leads all software activities with two goals: supporting a high-performance research and development team and driving the software development of a commercial research instrument. Pierre holds a master’s degree in telecommunication from the ENSEIRB engineering school in Bordeaux, as well as a Biomedical Imaging and Signal processing Master of Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Scientific Founders

Jérôme Bibette
Jérôme Bibette
Jérôme Bibette is Professor and Department Director of soft matter physics at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, France.
Jean Baudry
Jean Baudry
Jean Baudry is Research Director, soft matter physics at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, France.
Klaus Eyer
Klaus Eyer
Klaus Eyer is Professor at Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
Nicolas Bremond
Nicolas Bremond
Nicolas Bremond is Assistant Professor of soft matter physics at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, France.
Guilhem Chenon
Guilhem Chenon
Guilhem is a research engineer at the department of Jérôme Bibette (soft matter physics) at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, France.

Applications and Assays

Antibody Discovery

3d illustration of antibodies attacking virus cell into the bloodstream

Functional antibodies against GPCR targets.

Cell Line Development

3D Rendering of a Natural Killer Cell (NK Cell) destroying a cancer cell

Multi-parametric readout.

T-Cell Therapies

Detailed Image of  Stem Cell

Recovering one-in-a-million functional reactive T-cells.

Novel Assays

DNA, Hospital, Laboratory, Speedometer,

Superior sensitivity to identify rare and functional cells.

Our initial assays will focus on antibody, T cell therapeutics and cell line development.

Our Ascella platform analyzes millions of single cell functions in a few hours is particularly suited for antibody discovery and T cell screening.

Our EnSorCell system integrates kinetics, imaging and sorting – powering cell line selection, development and quality control.

Our broad portfolio of assays for antibody discovery including binding, cross-reactivity, target-specific internalization and (ant)agonism selects your antibodies of interest in a single day.

Our cytokine secretion assays are designed for capturing antigen-specific cytotoxic T-cells (both primary and engineered).

We will expand our portfolio to novel assays for recovering rare cell populations of interest linking phenotype to genotype.

Our Technology

Based on our ten-year experience and having screened hundreds of millions of antibodies producing cells (both primary and engineered B cells) and billions of primary T cells, we have the perfect technology and biological expertise for finding the one-in-a million rare clone.

With our team we use our deep understanding and experience to introduce two benchtop instruments, based on droplet microfluidics, each offering a complete solution with a unique combination of features:

EnSorCell

Closeup of colorful feathers in peacock tail

Colors of cells encapsulated in droplets are reminiscent of peacocks’ tail-feather patterns. Only deep phenotyping can distinguish each one of them.

EnSorCell* is a fascinating instrument that can Encapsulate and Sort Cells based on their deep phenotype and function.

*Old English meaning “to Enchant” or “Fascinate”. In our context, to Encapsulate and Sort Cells which provides an answer for your cells.

Features

  • 150,000 single cells
  • Functional/kinetics profiling
  • High-content phenotype imaging
  • Recovery of live cells
  • < 2h instrument time per experiment

Ascella

Like stars, droplets screened by Saber instruments are both bright and innumerable. Like stars, only a handful are of interest to scientists.

The Ascella* platform consists of three modules:

  1. Nebula: Droplet Generator
  2. Comet: Droplet Sorter
  3. Nightsky: Phenotype-Genotype Linker

*Ascella is a giant star in the constellation of Sagittarius. Its brightness makes it easy to spot in the night sky.

Features

  • 5 million single cell screening capacity
  • Sorting on phenotype / function
  • Picking the one-in-a-million, rare functional cell
  • Recovering live cells
  • Linking the phenotype with the genotype on single cell resolution
  • Advanced data analytics centered on understanding cell function

Nebula

Closeup of the Great Orion Nebula

Nebulae are interstellar clouds of dust and gas where stars are born.

Comet

Detailed photograph of comet Hale Bopp

A celestial object consisting of a nucleus of ice and dust and, when near the sun, a ‘tail’ of gas and dust particles pointing away from the sun.

NightSky

Long exposure photograph of the Milky Way and its galactic center on a field near the city of Madrid in Spain.

On a clear night, sparkling stars appear to be still and ordered against the black background.

Nebula

Closeup of the Great Orion Nebula

Nebulae are interstellar clouds of dust and gas where stars are born.

Comet

Detailed photograph of comet Hale Bopp

A celestial object consisting of a nucleus of ice and dust and, when near the sun, a ‘tail’ of gas and dust particles pointing away from the sun.

NightSky

Long exposure photograph of the Milky Way and its galactic center on a field near the city of Madrid in Spain.

On a clear night, sparkling stars appear to be still and ordered against the black background.

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    Milky Way photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash • meeting photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash