Harvard's Office of Technology Development and LabCentral invite you to the second event in the 2025 Guppy Tank series, where Harvard life-science innovators will pitch their early-stage concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive, in-depth feedback.

Please join us on Monday, November 3, from 4 PM to 6 PM at LabCentral to hear the presentation, learn from experts on startup formation, and participate in giving audience feedback. The event is accompanied by a reception with food and drinks. All are welcome!

Cells interact with diverse arrays of factors within their extracellular environments, including secreted protein factors such as growth factors, neuromodulators, and cytokines. These proteins interact with receptors on the surface of specific cell types, and their interactions are crucial for maintaining tissue health and are frequently involved in disease. However, we don’t yet have good tools to discover these protein-cell interactions on a large scale.
 
To address this challenge, a research team led by Dr. Josh Tycko in Professor Michael Greenberg’s lab developed Barcoded Ligand Sequencing (BLS), a high-throughput platform for multiplexed measurement of ligand–cell interactions. BLS allows for the simultaneous analysis of tens of thousands of proteins in a single pooled experiment. Unlike traditional approaches, BLS supports large candidate proteins, works on live cells, and can identify cell type-specific interactions from complex cell populations.
 
BLS is a versatile and scalable method for profiling high-affinity ligand–cell interactions, enabling researchers to gain a deeper understanding of how proteins interact with cells and perform high-throughput binder engineering for targeted drug delivery.