Myriade
Uplifting Virology through Seamless Nanoparticle Vision

If there ever were a time the world would most appreciate the fruits of a virologist’s labours, it would be today, with a viral pandemic threatening the lives of millions. Healthcare organisations from both private and public sectors are focusing all their efforts towards subduing COVID-19 via vaccines and medication. Medical researches and virologists, in particular, require the most cutting-edge technologies to help them effectively study microscopic organisms and develop new medicines expeditiously. “Ensuring the efficacy and safety of new drugs is key. Virus concentration (dose) and the purity of a solution must be precisely determined. Still, viruses are near invisible with today’s standard optical techniques,” expresses Philippe Garabedian, COO of Myriade. For this reason, Myriade, a company that focuses on providing next-gen nanoscale imaging solutions for researchers and medical professionals, has developed the Videodrop: a unique device that allows simple, fast measurement, and analysis of nanoparticles in under 40 seconds.

Founded in 2017, Myriade’s device is designed and built based on the research experience of Pr Martine Boccara, a virologist, professor at the UPMC, a former member of IBENS, and researcher at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, and her brother Pr Claude Boccara, a French physicist specialising in optics. Based on the principles of interferometry, Videodrop makes it possible to measure the size and concentration of nanoparticles in the range of 30 nanometres and 10 microns without labelling, in near real time by utilising just five microlitres of a sample. “Videodrop’s technology was first conceived in 2013, during the Tara Oceans expedition,” explains Garabedian. The mission was to sample and study seawater from different parts of the world and determine the impact of global warming on planktonic and coral systems.

Throughout the expedition, Martine was overseeing inventory of the population of viruses in Tara’s seawater samples. She was looking for a simple and robust virus counting method to carry out her experiments, as the traditional methods proved to be either extraordinarily time-consuming or difficult to master.

Videodrop is easy-to-use, highly accessible, and works expeditiously

Seeking to overcome these challenges that, in the long run, hamper the progress of an ongoing research, the innovative brother-sister duo began investing their efforts toward developing the Videodrop, which was commercially released in October 2019.

“The device is easy-to-use, highly accessible, and works expeditiously,” adds Garabedian. Additionally, Videodrop continually monitors viral vector solutions for gene and cell therapy. It seamlessly distinguishes the different types of extracellular vesicles to vectorise, diagnose, or treat, and analyses phages solutions used for phagotherapies.

To provide more insight into the device’s capabilities, Garabedian explains the results of a comparison study of three methods to measure lentiviral vector physical titer for DP release and USP/DSP in-process control. “The measurements achieved with Videodrop correlated well with qNano, and the results obtained were consistent with standard lentiviral vector physical titration methods,” he says. Furthermore, Videodrop displayed easy API control owing to its expeditious titration method that consumes low volumes of product. This feature of Videodrop can be advantageous for drug product release as well as offline in-process controls.

With such an intuitive device made readily accessible for healthcare professionals across the globe, obtaining the most desirable results concerning the future of medicine is one step closer. Moving forward, Myriade intends to bolster Videodrop’s outreach by expanding the business within the U.S. and Asiatic regions. And to do so, the company is seeking to establish partnerships with various organisations throughout the globe and publish several research papers. “I think, with the combined efforts of Myriade’s product development and the marketing capabilities of other companies, we can offer the virology marketplace a powerful value proposition,” concludes Garabedian.