Sindri Partners with University of Delaware on State-Funded Cryo-EM Research Initiative

We’re proud to announce that Sindri is the industry partner on a CAT-ARC grant awarded to Prof. Kelvin Lee’s team at the University of Delaware, as part of the Delaware Bioscience Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) — a State of Delaware funded program administered by the Delaware Biotechnology Institute (DBI). This $100K pilot project will explore how Ultra-High-Quality (UHQ) Graphene Cryo-EM Grids can support the imaging of AAV gene therapy vectors — a crucial step in understanding and optimizing these delivery platforms.

This collaboration began at a lunch table during the Delaware Bioscience Association’s DNA conference last year — a serendipitous moment that reminds us just how connected and collaborative the Delaware scientific community is. At the time, Prof. Lee had just begun exploring cryo-EM techniques for imaging viral vectors, signaling a broader trend: the growing adoption of cryo-EM.

This pilot will focus on imaging AAV vectors, which happen to bind well to carbon-based substrates. That makes them an ideal model for evaluating performance — especially in terms of resolution, aggregation resistance, and distribution. It’s a simplified system with a high-impact target, and we’re excited to see what these results reveal.

Cryo-EM is rapidly reshaping structural biology. From drug discovery to vaccine development to the study of large macromolecular assemblies, its impact spans every corner of molecular science. But its full potential is often limited by one persistent challenge: sample preparation. And at the center of that challenge is the cryo-EM grid — the delicate support that holds proteins or particles in place for high-resolution imaging.

Most cryo-EM grids fall short. Researchers face common problems like poor reproducibility, denaturation, aggregation, preferential alignment, and inconsistent ice thickness. These make it hard to get uniform molecular distributions and limit achievable resolution. Commercially available graphene grids, in particular, are often contaminated, torn, or mechanically unstable, failing to deliver on the material’s promise.

Sindri’s solution starts upstream: we’ve developed a scalable, UHQ graphene production method — and we’re leveraging it to create UHQ graphene grids. Clean, continuous, and mechanically robust, our grids are designed to realize graphene’s potential in cryo-EM, not just speculate about it.

🔬 This research was supported by the State of Delaware through the Delaware Biotechnology Institute’s Bioscience CAT program, formally known as the Delaware Bioscience Center for Advanced Technology.

To the cryo-EM community: if your samples are being held back by your grids, we’d love to connect.