PlatformSTL at the Startup Connection

Thank you to the Startup Connection for an incredible opportunity this week! PlatformSTL had a great time in our first year with a table at the event. Our software engineering & UX team was on hand to demo three PlatformSTL technologies:

• Write to Hand app to assess handwriting motor skills

• Proprio wearables and AI to track activities of daily living

• Trusted Kidney ML software to assess donor kidney biopsies

Collaborators from Washington University in St. Louis--including an inventor for each technology--also answered lots of questions from interested viewers. The Startup Connection was a fantastic experience for our whole team to demonstrate the past year's work in turning ideas into minimum viable products and beyond. 

Special thanks to Husch Blackwell for choosing PlatformSTL as your firm's winner for legal services. We appreciate your support in advance and look forward to working with you!

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2019/11/07/see-which-companies-took-home-prize-money-at-this.html

PlatformSTL's New Office

We've moved! PlatformSTL is now located in the newly renovated BioSTL Building at 4340 Duncan Ave in the Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis. Our new location provides even closer proximity to our collaborators at Washington University School of Medicine, located less than a block away. 

PlatformSTL's office is housed within the BioGenerator suite of the newly opened building, which years ago housed the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printing presses. The space at BioGenerator is a hub for national and international companies looking to do business and invest in St. Louis-based startups. 

Come check out our new space! To schedule a meeting, contact us. 

Interior Concept of the 4340 Duncan Building

Accurate Typing of Human Leukocyte Antigen Class I Genes by Oxford Nanopore Sequencing

In collaboration with Dr. Liu and Washington University in St. Louis, PlatformSTL is currently developing a kit and software to enable Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing by Nanopore sequencing. PlatformSTL's product will allow users to perform rapid high-resolution typing of HLA genes to better support organ and stem cell transplantations.

Nanopore sequencing, enabled by the MinION device from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, is the only technology that offers portable, single-molecule sequencing and ultra-long reads. The technology is ideal for the typing of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes for transplantation and cancer immunotherapy. However, such applications have been hindered by the high error rate of Nanopore sequencing reads. We developed the workflow and bioinformatic pipeline, Athlon (Accurate Typing of Human leukocyte antigen by Oxford Nanopore), to perform high-resolution typing of Class I HLA genes by Nanopore sequencing. The method features a novel algorithm for candidate allele selection followed by error correction through consensus building. Here, we describe the protocol of using Athlon packaged in a VirtualBox image for the above application.

Reference : https://jmd.amjpathol.org/article/S1525-1578(17)30430-0/abstract

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Chang Liu, MD,PhD Assistant Professor, Pathology & Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis

Medical Director, Barnes-Jewish Hospital HLA Laboratory Attending Physician, Barnes-Jewish Hospital Transfusion Medicine service

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