As the life science analytical instrument industry faces the challenges presented by uncertain government and academic funding and slower CapEx spending by biopharma companies, plus nervousness from potential investors, companies introducing new technology for life science research are facing a more difficult environment for raising money. Formed earlier this year, Precision Cell Systems (PCS) is addressing the need for companies to find fresh funding and support current products, as well as to get new products to market.

“The idea is that with a larger product portfolio, we can share the overhead, which gives us both more shots on goal to explore product market fit and a better chance of sustaining ourselves through market ups and downs“

As Anup Parikh, Ph.D., CEO of PCS, told IBO, “Investors started demanding profitability over rapid growth and high burn rates. A lot of single-product companies got stuck because you can’t really achieve profitability with one product line when you still have to support the overhead of running a full business.”

PCS has completed two acquisitions so far this year, buying S2 Genomics, a provider of genomic sample prep technology, and ORFLO, a cell counter company. Together, the companies have more than 1,000 instruments installed, over 700 active customers, over 500 scientific publications and 25 patents.

“The idea is that with a larger product portfolio, we can share the overhead, which gives us both more shots on goal to explore product market fit and a better chance of sustaining ourselves through market ups and downs,

Cell analysis workflows can be labor-intensive and time-consuming, and must address the fragility of cells and the need for higher-throughput solutions. S2 Genomics’ Singulator Platform is an automated system for tissue dissociation, specifically designed to address the drawbacks of manual approaches. OROFLO’s Moxi family of systems consists of a compact coulter cell counter and a mini flow cytometer, stressing accuracy and precision compared to cell counters using imaging techniques.

Both companies address workflows for single-cell RNA sequencing, among the fastest growing single-cell applications. PCS set out to focus on cell analysis technologies serving research applications. “We want these various product lines to have similar characteristics so that our shared teams can stay unified rather than having to subdivide and specialize,” said Dr. Parikh.

PCS is utilizing operational resources that can be shared by all its businesses, such as sales and marketing. “The idea is that with a larger product portfolio, we can share the overhead, which gives us both more shots on goal to explore product market fit and a better chance of sustaining ourselves through market ups and downs,” explained Dr. Parikh. He added, “The model also addresses investors’ reluctance to fund a company with one or two commercialized products. But if they’re investing in PCS, which has four or five product lines and shared infrastructure, you need to invest a lot less and you get the other investors from those acquisitions also coming in.”

Challenges for PCS include addressing the different manufacturing resources of the acquired companies. In response, PCS is working with a large lab instrument contract manufacturer, which can consolidate manufacturing as well as provide best practices.

“To stay capital efficient, we’re leaning heavily into AI to streamline operations like tech support and marketing”

Another challenge is cost effectively addressing issues such as technical support and cross-selling. Here, PCS is applying AI. “To stay capital efficient, we’re leaning heavily into AI to streamline operations like tech support and marketing,” said Dr. Parikh. “We’re using AI agents to enable higher productivity that you’d normally need larger teams to achieve but with our small team.” He gave an example. “One application is tech support. When emails come in asking, ‘How do I use this instrument? How do I interpret this data? This sample looks weird, here’s a picture—what does this mean?,’ it all goes to an AI agent that’s become an expert on our products based on our previous publications and tech support history, and it can generate answers in seconds.”

PCS is also working to bring the latest technology of the companies they acquired to market. “What’s unique about this moment in life sciences is that tens of millions were spent developing new technology over the last five years, and it’s just now being commercialized right when funding has dried up,” observed Dr. Parikh. Consequently, a finished product that could not be launched due to lack of funding can now be released.

New products from PSC are expected to launch in the first quarter of 2026. “We don’t have to spend time in R&D developing those instruments, we just need to focus on tech transfer to get them to our contract manufacturer for scalable manufacturing,” explained Dr. Parikh. “We’re giving these technologies a path to scale into commercialization without the heavy investment because we’ve already built the infrastructure.” In addition, PCS can continue to support current users of the acquired companies’ technology who may rely on it.

PCS expects to announce additional acquisitions in the near future and is looking for more companies to acquire. “The goal is capital efficiency, so we can weather flat or declining revenues when markets get volatile. The strength in numbers approach means if market volatility hurts one product line, hopefully another can compensate,” said Dr. Parikh.