Lightcast Appoints Industry Veteran Philip Binns as Chairman of the Board

Former Agilent executive to help guide commercial growth strategies for groundbreaking benchtop single-cell functional analysis platform

Lightcast, a pioneering life science tools company, today announced the appointment of Philip Binns as chairman of its board of directors, effective May 1, 2025. With this appointment, the Lightcast board includes one investor director each from Arch Ventures, Illumina Ventures, M-Ventures, and Longwall Ventures; two independent directors, Kevin Knopp, CEO of 908 Devices, and Kevin Hrusovsky, chairman and former CEO of Quanterix; and observers from OMX Ventures, +ND Capital, and Terra Magnum.

"We are thrilled to add Phil to our highly experienced board," said Paul Loeffen, PhD, CEO of Lightcast. "His extensive industry expertise and proven leadership will be invaluable as we evolve from a product development-focused company into a fully commercial organization, expanding our global reach and maximizing our impact in the life sciences market."

Mr. Binns brings decades of experience in scientific instrumentation and leadership, recently serving as president of the life sciences and applied markets group at Agilent Technologies. He joined Agilent in 2010 through its acquisition of Varian, Inc., where he played a pivotal role in expanding the company's atomic and molecular spectroscopy portfolio into a market-leading business.

In addition to his new role at Lightcast, Mr. Binns serves as chair and non-executive director of Epiminder, a company developing implantable brain-monitoring devices; as a director of the Bionics Institute, a globally recognized medical device research organization; and as a National Council Advisor to the Australian Industry AI Group. He holds a degree in business management from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from Melbourne Business School.

"The Lightcast Envisia™ platform has the potential to transform single-cell analysis by unlocking functional insights that were previously out of reach," said Binns. "The company is at an exciting inflection point, and I'm eager to collaborate with this talented team to support the platform's global adoption and help drive the next generation of biologics and therapies."

While traditional single-cell analysis techniques often rely on genomic data to infer function, the benchtop Envisia platform uses droplet microfluidics to perform highly controlled, sequential single-cell functional assays that capture rich functional data sets to improve decision making. Built around Lightcast's proprietary light-controlled droplet manipulation technology, the platform enables parallel interrogation of tens of thousands of picoliter-scale droplets, offering unmatched precision and flexibility. By integrating functional screening early in the antibody discovery process, the Envisia platform allows researchers to select and advance the most promising candidates. It also opens new possibilities in cell-cell interaction studies and broader applications in immunology and oncology.

Lightcast recently announced the limited commercial release of its Envisia benchtop platform. The company is actively collaborating with leading pharmaceutical and academic institutions to validate performance, optimize protocols, and expand application areas. These efforts will support the full commercial launch of a comprehensive suite of validated protocols later in 2025. The complete Envisia workflow will include advanced instrumentation, intelligent software, a purpose-built cartridge system, and assay kits optimized for a broad range of cell types, assay formats, and research applications. To learn more about the Envisia platform, visit https://www.lightcast.bio/technology/envisia-platform.

About Lightcast

Lightcast aims to unleash new capabilities within the single-cell analysis field by developing a more accessible, scalable, and flexible platform for scientists in basic, translational, and applied research. These capabilities will empower new biological discoveries and accelerate the development of novel drugs, therapies, and biologics. Founded in 2019 and based in Cambridge, UK, Lightcast has invented a technology that uses rays of light to control picoliter-scale droplets for functional analysis of individual cells. For more information, visit www.lightcast.bio.

Lightcast, the Lightcast logo, and Envisia are trademarks of Lightcast Discovery Ltd.

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