Agilent and Precisionary Instruments Partner to Advance Seahorse XF Tissue Workflows

A new collaboration streamlines Seahorse XF metabolic analysis with precision-cut slices from the Compresstome® vibrating microtome

Precisionary Instruments is excited to announce a new partnership with Agilent Technologies, integrating our Compresstome® vibrating microtome into Agilent’s Seahorse XF Flex Analyzer platform. This collaboration offers researchers a validated, reproducible solution for preparing precision-cut slices—including acute brain slices, liver tissue, and other 3D models—for high-quality, real-time metabolic analysis.

As Seahorse XF technology expands into live tissue and 3D models, the accuracy of your metabolic data increasingly depends on one thing: the quality of your tissue slices.

Why This Matters for Metabolic Research

Tissue models like brain slices, organoids, and explants provide more physiological relevance than 2D cultures—but only if they are prepared properly. Seahorse XF assays measure sensitive metabolic outputs like oxygen consumption rate (OCR) and extracellular acidification rate (ECAR), which are strongly affected by slice viability, thickness, and integrity.

By integrating the Compresstome VF-510-0Z vibratome, Agilent and Precisionary now offer researchers a complete workflow from sample preparation to Seahorse XF readout—without compromising tissue health.

“Live tissue analysis is a growing area in metabolic and therapeutic discovery,” said Dr. Abigail Chu, Chief Scientific Officer at Precisionary Instruments. “By pairing our Compresstome vibratome with Agilent’s Seahorse XF platform, scientists now have a streamlined and reproducible workflow for studying energy metabolism in intact tissue samples.”

Tested. Validated. Trusted.

Agilent recently highlighted the success of this integrated workflow in several technical publications. In experiments using rat brain and liver tissue, slices made with the Compresstome showed:

• Uniform thickness for consistent Seahorse well-to-well signal

• Viability suitable for metabolic profiling

• Clean geometrical fit in Seahorse XF 3D Capture Microplates

• Minimal variability across replicates

“With Compresstome, we have optimized the XF Flex 3D tissue workflow using rat liver and brain tissue slices,” said Dr. Chris Braun, Associate VP of Marketing at Agilent. “Compresstome is easy to set up and generates consistent, viable XF Flex assay samples. Precisionary’s support, including training videos and tissue sectioning protocols, has been invaluable.”

Precision Tools for Precision Data

This partnership brings together two key pieces of the metabolic workflow:

• Tissue preparation with the Compresstome vibrating microtome

• Real-time metabolic analysis with Seahorse XF technology

Together, the integrated workflow supports cutting-edge research in:

• Neurodegeneration and acute brain slice metabolism

• Liver function and hepatotoxicity

• Tumor metabolism in 3D models and organoids

• Translational studies using patient-derived tissues

Researchers now have the tools to go from healthy, precision-cut slices to accurate Seahorse metabolic data—confidently and consistently.

Learn More

Precisionary Instruments is proud to support researchers pushing the boundaries of disease modeling, drug discovery, and biomarker development.

📘 Explore the Compresstome vibrating microtome lineup
📩 Contact us for workflow guidance or demo requests