Waters and IMU Biosciences Forge Strategic Partnership to Scale AI-Powered Immune Mapping Platform
Key Insights
Waters Corporation (search) and IMU Biosciences (search) announced a strategic partnership to accelerate IMU's AI-powered High Definition Immunology platform for decoding the immune system at unprecedented scale.
The collaboration integrates Waters' BD FACSDiscover and BD Rhapsody instruments with IMU's proprietary machine learning analytics, capable of measuring over 100 million data points from a single blood sample.
IMU is building the world's largest immune dataset with access to patient samples and population-wide clinical data, aiming to establish a universal standard for immune profiling.
Waters Corporation (search) (NYSE: WAT) and IMU Biosciences (search), a biotechnology company focused on decoding the immune system, announced on June 24, 2026 a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of IMU's next-generation AI-powered High Definition (HD) Immunology platform. The collaboration aims to transform how the immune system is understood, diagnosed, and treated across a broad range of diseases, including cancer (search).
The partnership brings together Waters Biosciences' advanced flow cytometry and single-cell technologies — including BD FACSDiscover Cell Analyzers, BD flow cytometry reagents with BD Horizon Real Dyes, BD Rhapsody Instruments, and BD OMICS-One WTA Next Assay and Protein Panels — with IMU's proprietary AI and machine learning analytics. Together, the integrated platform can reproducibly characterize the immune system in real time, converting complex immune data into actionable insights at scale across discovery, translational, and clinical research applications.
Unprecedented Resolution from a Single Blood Sample
IMU's platform measures the immune system in extraordinary detail, delivering more than 100 million data points from a single blood sample by combining high-definition multiomic analysis with machine learning analytics. The company is building what it describes as the world's largest immune dataset, with unrivaled access to patient samples and population-wide clinical data, establishing a universal standard for immune profiling.
"Waters Biosciences was the clear partner to help IMU Biosciences (search) scale our HD Immunology platform to the level required for true population-wide immune mapping, given their longstanding leadership in high-throughput flow cytometry and single-cell technologies," said John Baker, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of IMU Biosciences. "Our world-leading immune dataset and proprietary AI analytics will unlock the potential of Waters' best-in-class analytical instruments, accelerating our work to decode the immune system and power the next generation of precision medicine."
Building a Clinical-Grade Immune Atlas
Steve Conly, Senior Vice President of Waters Biosciences at Waters Corporation (search), emphasized the clinical ambition of the collaboration: "By partnering with IMU Biosciences (search), we are helping to build the most detailed picture of the human immune system ever assembled at clinical scale. Together, our companies' cutting-edge technologies across instruments, reagents, and informatics will help advance immune profiling into a standardized, universally accessible clinical tool that can be used across the continuum of care for cancer (search) and other diseases, supporting smarter, faster drug development."
The companies intend to pursue additional studies in translational research for novel biomarker discovery to enable clinical applications in flow cytometry.
Data Presented at CYTO 2026
At the annual meeting of the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry (CYTO 2026), Waters Biosciences and IMU Biosciences (search) presented data demonstrating system-level immune profiling on the BD FACSDiscover A8 Cell Analyzer with a 58-color spectral panel using BD reagents, as well as the integration of high-throughput single-cell multiomics with the BD Rhapsody System.
Clinical Programs and Therapeutic Reach
IMU Biosciences (search), founded by experimental immunologists and computational biologists with over a decade of expertise from the Francis Crick Institute and King's College London, is advancing its platform toward clinical application across a broad range of immune-mediated diseases and therapeutic contexts. The company has active programs in stem cell and bone marrow transplantation, solid organ transplantation, and immuno-oncology. All Waters products used in the partnership remain designated as research use only (RUO).