Frequently Asked Questions

TROVO is a benchtop cell analysis and live cell recovery system. It uses light-based hydrogel lithography to print customizable microwells directly onto standard 6-well cell culture plates, enabling parallel co-culture assays with real-time fluorescence and brightfield imaging over days to weeks.

When a cell population of interest is identified, TROVO recovers it intact — without microfluidics, high-pressure sorting, or predefined surface markers. The core workflow is: print → seed → image → identify → recover.

Incucyte gives you bulk population readouts over time — you can watch what's happening at the population level, but you can't recover specific cells based on what you observed. TROVO closes that gap: you watch individual clones behave over days, identify the ones that matter by function rather than marker, and physically retrieve them.

Same incubator-friendly footprint and long-term imaging concept — but with single-clone resolution and live cell recovery on the other end.

Berkeley Lights offers single-cell resolution but comes with significant cost, complexity, and footprint. TROVO is microfluidics-free, runs on standard 6-well plates with no proprietary consumables beyond the gel reagent, and is designed to fit into existing lab workflows without specialized infrastructure.

For B cell antibody discovery specifically, TROVO achieves comparable resolution with a simpler setup, secretor detection in under 2 hours, and a two-round screening workflow to eliminate false positives.

Yes. TROVO is 18"×18"×18" and 55 lbs — designed specifically to sit inside a standard cell culture incubator. It requires only standard power (100–240 VAC) with no CO2 regulation or heated stage built into the instrument itself. The incubator provides the controlled environment; TROVO provides the imaging and capture.

TROVO currently processes one plate per run. Plates can be run sequentially, and multiple samples can be consolidated onto a single 6-well plate to maximize throughput per run. For groups with high-volume needs, contact us to discuss workflow design.

TROVO is currently Research Use Only (RUO). It is designed for process development, discovery, and analytical characterization roles in research settings.

TROVO prints 12,000–18,000 microwells per 6-well plate, depending on microwell size configuration. Microwell diameter is customizable from 100–900µm, with wall height in the 100–200µm range.

TROVO uses Poisson distribution statistics at seeding to control occupancy, and the software identifies and excludes microwells containing more than one cell — enabling clonal analysis and monoclonality assurance. This does reduce effective throughput somewhat compared to bulk seeding, so there is a practical tradeoff depending on your application.

For applications requiring strict single-cell confirmation (e.g., cell line development, monoclonal antibody work), TROVO can flag wells with confirmed single-cell occupancy for downstream selection.

Compartmentalization is maintained by the combination of hydrogel wall height and surface tension. Spillover has not been observed in internal studies with standard handling. For researchers with strict single-cell tracking requirements, we're happy to walk through the specific handling protocols that support this — reach out to discuss your use case.

The microwells are printed using a biocompatible PEGDA-based hydrogel. For 3D culture applications — organoids, spheroids, and similar — customers can use their preferred matrix in combination with TROVO's gel. The City of Hope webinar covers this workflow in detail for 2D and 3D brain tumor co-culture models.

TROVO has been used successfully with 1-, 6-, 24-, and 96-well plates, as well as chamber slides and standard glass slides. Compatibility with proprietary plates from third-party platforms has been explored on a case-by-case basis. Contact us to discuss your specific labware requirements.

After imaging identifies microwells of interest, a biocompatible liquid capture gel is applied across the plate surface. TROVO then uses a 405nm laser projected through an LCD screen beneath the plate to selectively polymerize the gel in chosen microwells only — encapsulating the target cell populations in solid gel while leaving all other wells unaffected.

Unwanted cells are washed away. The capture gel is then dissolved enzymatically to release the recovered cells, which are ready for downstream NGS, expansion, or re-challenge assays.

Recovery rates are cell-type dependent and vary by application. We are actively building out benchmarking data across workflows. Contact us for the most current figures relevant to your cell type, or to discuss your specific use case with our team.

The current workflow recovers selected microwells as a pooled population rather than individual isolated fractions. For groups that need to keep individual microwell contents distinct post-recovery, a serial dilution approach back into a second microwell array is one option. Contact us to discuss whether this fits your application.

Yes. Recovered cells maintain normal phenotypic expression and full functionality post-expansion, as demonstrated across multiple case studies including 12-day CAR-T co-culture assays with tumor rechallenge. The fluidics-free capture process avoids shear stress entirely, preserving transcriptome integrity for downstream NGS.

TROVO is used across CAR-T, TCR-T, and TIL programs — primarily for functional screening, clone selection, and potency assessment. Key use cases include distinguishing persistent clones from short-term killers, ranking constructs by real-time killing kinetics, and identifying tumor-reactive TILs in scarce clinical samples without predefined markers.

Yes. TROVO supports 3D co-culture workflows including organoid and spheroid models. Customers can use their preferred extracellular matrix in combination with TROVO's gel system. See the City of Hope webinar for a full walkthrough of 3D brain tumor co-culture with live clone retrieval.

Yes. TROVO supports high-throughput B cell screening with secretion detection in under 2 hours, two-round screening for native protein binding specificity (eliminating sticky IgG false positives), and live cell recovery for downstream sequencing. Positive hit rates as low as ~0.04% in primary PBMC repertoires have been demonstrated. See the B cell case study for full workflow details.

Yes. TROVO supports monoclonality assurance and functional selection during gene editing workflows. Its fluidics-free design avoids the "survival tax" associated with FACS-based isolation of fragile edited cell lines — clone selection is based on morphology or confluency rather than markers, and recovery is gentle enough to maintain high post-isolation viability.

Yes. TROVO's image-guided live cell enrichment workflow supports sample preparation from small tissue pieces — as little as a 5mm biopsy and 10⁴ cells — in under 4 hours for 3 samples. It is fluidics-free with high debris tolerance and a 4°C processing environment. Demonstrated to improve % fraction reads in cells vs. unenriched controls across breast, lung, and colon tissues in 10X Genomics scRNA-seq.

TROVO provides 3-color fluorescence imaging (excitation 488nm; emission channels at 494nm, 554nm, and 633nm) plus brightfield, at 6x magnification. Imaging is fully automated with per-microwell data acquisition and real-time kinetics tracking across the entire plate over days to weeks.

TROVO's software includes automated cell detection, confluency tracking per microwell, Z-score killing index calculation against internal controls, and data export via USB or Ethernet. Results are exportable for downstream analysis and visualization. The software uses recipe-based workflow programming with real-time monitoring and audit trails.

Print hydrogel microwells onto your standard 6-well plate (48 min for a full plate) → Seed your cells → Image longitudinally over days to weeks, unattended in your incubator → Identify populations of interest by functional behavior → Recover via light-induced capture gel → proceed to NGS, expansion, or re-challenge.

Most of the assay runs unattended. Hands-on steps are concentrated at seeding and recovery.