November 19, 2020 SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Rebus Biosystems, Inc., a life science technology company building innovative tools to enable spatial omics without compromise, today announced the closing of a $20 million Series B financing round, led by Illumina Ventures and joined by Lifecore Partners, Ncore Ventures, Xolon Invest, CTK Investments, Ray Co., Ltd., Seegene Medical Foundation, LabGenomics Co., Ltd., and Timefolio Asset Management.
“We are excited to support Rebus Biosystems’ mission to bring powerful new spatial omics tools and assays to market,” said Tom Willis, Partner at Illumina Ventures. “The ability of its technology to increase throughput, without compromising biological fidelity, will offer spatial analysis to researchers throughout the scientific community.”
At the heart of the Rebus Biosystems spatial omics solution is the company’s patented Synthetic Aperture Optics (SAO) system, which provides the resolution and sensitivity of a 100X oil lens, but with the breadth and depth of a 20X air lens. Data is captured 100 times faster than with other imaging based spatial omics methods that rely on 100x lenses and z-stacking. Speed and ease of use of the system is further improved by integration with custom microfluidics and image processing.
“The next wave of breakthroughs in biology is going to come from insights into spatial context,” said Paul Sargeant, PhD, Rebus Biosystems CEO. “The Rebus Biosystems spatial omics solution enables high-throughput, automated analysis of a variety of biological molecules directly in and across large tissue sections with subcellular resolution. The flexibility and accessibility of our platform will enable more researchers to enter this rapidly emerging field.”
Early access to the first application developed for the platform, focused on spatial transcriptomics, is now available through the Spatial Omics as a Service program. Both academic groups and pharmaceutical companies have already been using data from the Rebus Biosystems spatial omics solution to advance their research.
“The Rebus Biosystems platform offers a unique solution that combines a fully automated microfluidics setup for sequential labelling of expressed transcripts with sensitive and scalable high-resolution imaging,” said Tomasz Nowakowski, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anatomy at UCSF, Investigator at the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, and member of the Allen Institute for Brain Science Next Generation Leaders Council. “Researchers in my lab and several of my colleagues are working with Rebus Biosystems because their technology is unique in enabling them to visualize gene expression profiles across large areas of human brain tissue sections at remarkable speed and without compromising data quality.”
The fully integrated, automated, standalone Rebus Biosystems instrument, along with optimized assay kits for spatial transcriptomics, will be launched in early 2021. Expanded applications, including multi–omic assays, will follow.
Rebus Biosystems is the new name for the company formerly known as Optical Biosystems. The company pioneered high–resolution imaging using SAO and has already deployed hardware to laboratories worldwide.
About Rebus Biosystems
Rebus Biosystems, Inc. is a life science technology company building innovative tools to enable spatial omics without compromise. The company’s automated spatial omics solution, which provides subcellular resolution of biological molecules directly in and across large tissue sections, is enabled by the combination of patented Synthetic Aperture Optics with custom microfluidics and image processing. The spatial omics solution will be available as a fully integrated, standalone instrument in early 2021. Early access is now available through the Rebus Biosystems Spatial Omics as a Service program. Learn more at www.rebusbio.com.
Contact:
Erin Cline Davis
edavis@rebusbio.com
415-640-9624