New Products | Slingshot Biosciences: synthetic flow cytometry controls ScatterBridgeTM

Flow cytometry controls have long been constrained by the biology they are meant to measure — donor variability, cold-chain dependency, lot inconsistency, and antigen drift over cell passage. Slingshot Biosciences resolves this by replacing biological material entirely with precision-engineered synthetic mimics that replicate cell scatter, surface biochemistry, and fluorescence properties under defined, manufacturable tolerances. The result is a control reagent system that behaves like a cell, but performs like a standard.

Standard flow cytometry controls rely on primary human blood, fixed whole blood, isolated leukocyte fractions, or cell lines. These introduce fundamental reproducibility problems:

• Donor-to-donor variability in antigen density
• Lot-to-lot inconsistency, cold-chain dependency
• Short viable shelf life
• Biosafety considerations with unfixed material

In cell therapy manufacturing specifically, using primary cells as release testing controls introduces additional risk because the control itself is unstable and uncharacterized at the antigen copy-number level. Slingshot's synthetic mimics are purpose-built to eliminate each of these failure points.

ScatterBridge™ — Cross-Instrument Scatter Standardization

ScatterBridge™ is a dedicated FSC/SSC standardization control designed to harmonize scatter parameters across flow cytometers from different manufacturers — a capability not achievable with biological controls, which behave inconsistently across distinct laser and detector configurations. It consists of nine distinct hydrogel populations forming a 3×3 grid on an FSC vs. SSC plot, spanning the full range of biologically relevant scatter coordinates.

Key applications:

• Standardize scatter results from one instrument to another across multi-site studies or core facilities
• Check scatter linearity and validate detector performance
• Track instrument performance over time as part of routine daily QC
• Recalibrate FSC/SSC settings following major instrument servicing or repair

Key advantages:

• Nine synthetic hydrogel populations cover a wide, biologically relevant FSC/SSC range in a single product
• Stable, non-biohazardous, and shelf-stable at ambient temperature — no cold chain required
• Lot-to-lot consistency governed by manufacturing tolerances rather than biological variation
• Directly complements FlowCytes® for daily QC, with both products using the same cell-mimic platform