Assay Cascade Design Sprint

Who it is for

A seed to Series B neuro or immunology program with a hit or a lead series and nobody who owns in vitro strategy. You have assays. What you do not have is a written cascade that says which readout decides what, at what threshold, and in what order.

Scope

One program, one modality. A second modality is a change order. Three named variants, which is usually how a buyer recognises their own situation:

• Glia and neuroimmune readout design — inflammasome, activation-state, complement and pruning, and phagocytosis readouts in human mono- and tri-culture, with controls and acceptance gates.
• Seeding and proteopathy model design — PFF and proteopathic-seed paradigms, separating aggregation from seeding from uptake, in a tri-culture neurodegeneration context, with toxicity gates.
• Neuronal network assay design for oligo and gene-targeted programs — MEA burst and network metrics, calcium imaging, ion-channel and transporter flux, plus knockdown validation, uptake and conjugate-delivery design for siRNA and ASO.

Inputs

Target and mechanism hypotheses, stage, budget envelope, the assays you already run and the data they have produced.

Deliverable

The Cascade Design Dossier:

• a cascade map from biochemical to cellular to functional to translational readout
• a spec sheet per assay: system, plate format (96, 384 or 1536), readout, controls, Z-prime and signal-to-background gates, throughput, cost per plate
• a build-versus-outsource call for each assay
• a 90-day build plan with the critical path marked
• go/no-go criteria at every tier
• a fit-for-purpose validation section, aligned with FDA’s 2025 roadmap on new approach methodologies
• a one-page executive summary that can go straight into a board deck

Timeline

Two to three weeks: kickoff, one mid-sprint working session, readout call.

What is excluded

Running any experiment. I have no wet lab, on purpose. Your bench or your CRO runs the work, which keeps me independent of the result and puts your wet-lab budget where it belongs.

Referred out

Immunohistochemistry (IHC), live-animal imaging and electron microscopy endpoints. The dossier names the partner and the handoff, and I take no fee of any kind for a referral.