Teiko Bio

Teiko Bio (teiko.bio) is a precision immune monitoring company that provides high-dimensional cytometry services for clinical trials and diagnostics development. Its offering, marketed as TokuProfile, combines four components: TokuKit whole blood collection and preservation kits; CLIA-validated spectral flow and mass cytometry panels; expert gating with quality-control checks; and a dashboard that performs statistical analysis and reporting on the resulting data.

TokuKit is a three-step, roughly 20-minute collect–fix–freeze workflow that requires no centrifuge or specialized equipment or training. Samples are frozen at -80°C and, according to the company, remain stable for months rather than the days typical of preservation methods such as Transfix or Cyto-Chex; unlike PBMC isolation, the kit preserves granulocytes including neutrophils, basophils and mast cells. The fixation reagent is PFA-based and methanol-free. Because fixation and permeabilization degrade forward- and side-scatter resolution, Teiko's panels gate on surface markers (for example CD66b for granulocytes) instead of scatter, and use SIGLEC-8 as a dump gate to exclude eosinophils, which the company reports are difficult to identify reliably by mass cytometry and highly sensitive to pre-fixation storage conditions.

Analytical products include off-the-shelf basic TBNK panels (markers include CD3, CD4, CD8, CD11c, CD14, CD16, CD19, CD45, CD56 and CD66b) for spectral flow and mass cytometry on either PBMCs or fixed whole blood, a focused 10-marker TokuFocus panel that can be upgraded in batches to a full panel, modular "building blocks" panel configurations, and custom panels handled case by case. The dashboard provides immune composition boxplots with p-values and FDR, unsupervised clustering and UMAP for discovering cell populations associated with response, a full gating tree per sample, and raw data export.

Founding story

The company was co-founded by Matt Spitzer, scientific cofounder and UCSF Assistant Professor, and Ramji Srinivasan, CEO and cofounder, with the stated aim of making immune monitoring a clinical reality.

Business model

Teiko sells laboratory services and consumables to trial sponsors: preservation kits (TokuKit), per-panel cytometry runs priced by panel, gating and analysis, and access to its reporting dashboard. It can act either as a central lab receiving samples directly or as an intermediary shipping to a sponsor's CRO, and can integrate absolute cell count data generated by an external CRO. Tiered panel options (focused panel with paid upgrade to the full panel, modular building blocks) create expansion revenue within a study.

Fee-for-service and consumables revenue, with published pricing by panel and upgrade paths from focused to full panels; cytometry readouts are delivered via published data transfer specifications into sponsors' clinical trial data systems.

Traction

The company reports more than 5,000 specimens processed in its CLIA lab, more than 3,000 TokuKits shipped, and 25 or more active and completed Phase I-IV clinical trials. It supports trials in the US, EU and Australia and operates a CLIA-compliant laboratory in Salt Lake City receiving samples on weekdays.

Latest developments

Current offerings described on the company's site include TokuProfile multi-parameter cytometry for global clinical trials, the TokuFocus 10-marker panel with batch upgrade to full panels, modular building-block panel configurations, and dashboard-based reporting with published data transfer specifications for integration into sponsors' clinical data systems.