Swiss Biotool Startup Bionomous Launches Sortivo

Swiss biotool startup Bionomous has launched Sortivo™, an automated benchtop platform for the gentle screening, sorting, and plating of complex biological entities — a step the company says will help labs adopt New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), the non-animal alternatives increasingly favoured by regulators.

Sortivo handles delicate biological entities ranging from roughly 300 μm to 2 mm — among them zebrafish embryos and organoids — automating workflows that until now have meant hours of manual pipetting under a stereomicroscope. The system pairs high-resolution brightfield and multi-channel fluorescence imaging with AI-based classification and gentle handling in a single compact device. In effect, Bionomous is offering for large, fragile entities what flow cytometry long provided for single cells: individualised screening at scale.

Built for a regulatory shift

The launch lands at a pivotal moment for drug development. Regulators are actively pushing labs toward NAMs — non-mammalian, non-animal methods that offer ethical, sustainability, and scientific advantages over traditional rodent or non-human-primate models in toxicology and pre-clinical work. Zebrafish embryos and organoids sit at the centre of that shift, but their use at scale has been held back by the labour-intensive, manual workflows around them.

By automating those steps, Bionomous argues, Sortivo can help academic, pharma, and CRO labs turn the promise of NAMs into routine, reproducible experiments.

“Sortivo represents the next step in our mission to automate and accelerate life science research,” said Frank Bonnet, CEO and co-founder of Bionomous. “Our customers told us very clearly: zebrafish and organoid workflows have outgrown manual sorting. They need a platform that combines gentle handling with image-based AI and standardised plating — one they can actually afford and operate every week. Sortivo is our answer.”

For co-founder and CMO Ana Hernando Ariza, the platform’s origins matter as much as its features. “What I am most proud of is that Sortivo was designed by biologists and engineers who understand the work done by hand. Every feature comes from a real conversation with a real lab. Sortivo is not just an automation device; it is a push for the kind of NAMs-based science the industry is moving towards.”

From EggSorter to Sortivo

Founded at EPFL in November 2019, Bionomous first made its name with the EggSorter, a device for handling zebrafish eggs and other small biological entities now installed in labs across Europe, North America, and Asia. Sortivo extends that platform to larger and more complex entities, broadening the company’s reach as demand for animal-free testing methods grows.

➡️ Source: Press Release | 📸 Bionomous’ team, ©Bionomous