How it Works
Print thousands of microwells.
Watch every clone. Recover what matters.
TROVO combines hydrogel microwell printing, longitudinal live-cell imaging, AI-assisted analysis and light-induced cell recovery in one benchtop system.
Turn your standard culture plate into thousands of individual experiments.
TROVO uses light-based hydrogel lithography to print customizable microwells directly onto standard cell culture plates. No new proprietary plate formats. No microfluidics. The printed array can go straight into an incubator like any culture plate.
Print specifications
- Single-well print time
- 8 min
- Full 6-well plate print time
- 48 min
- Microwell diameter
- 100–900 µm
- Wall height range
- 100–200 µm
- Compatible labware
- 1, 6, 24, 96-well plates + slides
Standard labware compatibility
Works with commonly used plates and slides — no proprietary formats required.
Any size or shape
Round, square or custom microwell geometry configured to your assay.
Biocompatible PEGDA hydrogel
Inert, non-toxic walls compatible with standard reagents and matrices.
Shared culture medium
At 200 µm walls, medium, oxygen and cytokines remain freely accessible.
Discover
Watch what your cells actually do.
TROVO automatically images the full microwell array at defined timepoints — fluorescence and brightfield — creating a time-course record for thousands of individual co-cultures instead of averaging across a full population.
Imaging specs
- Excitation
- 488 nm
- Emission channels
- 494 / 554 / 633 nm
- Fluorescence
- 3-color
- Lens magnification
- 6×
- Single-well scan
- 5 min
- Full-plate scan
- 30 min
Cytotoxicity
Per-microwell tumor killing over time.
Persistence
Identify clones that keep killing after one interaction.
Proliferation
T cell expansion measured alongside tumor killing.
Exhaustion
Longitudinal decline in killing activity.
Secretion
Fluorescent readout for secreted antibodies or cytokines.
Migration
Cell movement within and across microwell boundaries.
Why longitudinal tracking matters
Flow cytometry gives a snapshot. Bulk imaging gives population averages. TROVO tracks the same microwells over the full assay duration — generating a complete behavioral history for every clone.
Native controls via Poisson seeding
At the right seeding density, Poisson statistics naturally populate the array with T-cell-only, tumor-only and co-culture wells across a range of E:T ratios — creating matched internal controls on the same plate for Z-score-based ranking.
Retrieve
Recover the cells that earned it.
After imaging identifies microwells of interest, TROVO uses a light-induced capture gel to selectively encapsulate target populations in place. Unwanted cells are washed away; the gel is dissolved enzymatically, releasing viable recovered cells.
How capture works
A liquid, biocompatible capture gel is applied across the plate surface.
TROVO projects a 405 nm laser through an LCD screen beneath the plate — polymerizing the gel only in selected microwells.
The plate is washed, removing all uncaptured cells.
The solidified gel containing selected populations is enzymatically dissolved, releasing viable cells into solution.
Retrieval at a glance
- Gel polymerization
- 405 nm laser
- Dissolution
- Enzymatic
- Post-recovery state
- Viable & intact
- Downstream
- NGS, expansion, re-challenge, direct-to-PCR
Behavioral selection
Cells are recovered based on observed function — not predicted phenotype or predefined markers.
No physical stress
No high-pressure fluidics, no droplet generation — preserving viability and transcriptome integrity.
Flexible compatibility
Recovered populations feed directly into NGS, expansion, re-challenge, direct-to-PCR or single-cell analysis.
Analysis pipeline
From imaging to selection — a complete functional analysis workflow.
- 01Brightfield imaging of cells growing in microwells over time
- 02Cell-boundary segmentation using deep-learning tools such as CellPose3
- 03Fluorescence channel analysis to distinguish T cells from tumor cells
- 04Automated extraction of potency, proliferation and killing criteria
- 05Selection of top-performing microwells
- 06Encapsulation of selected populations in protective gel
- 07Retrieval for downstream analysis
Get in touch
See the full workflow in your experimental context.
Talk to the Enrich Biosystems team about your specific application and how Print, Discover and Retrieve map to your actual experiment.