Quantum-Si Incorporated filed an 8-K on September 28, 2026, disclosing updates regarding its development of the Proteus system, a next-generation platform for single-molecule protein sequencing. The company presented these updates at World HUPO 2026 in Singapore on September 29, 2026.
The presentation details the architecture of the Proteus system, which includes a benchtop instrument and two types of consumables: a Platinum Pro chip and a Proteus Nanowell Array. The Nanowell Array is described as a simple, passive consumable with an estimated 80 million wells at launch, compared to the Platinum Pro chip. The presentation notes that the Proteus instrument is 17.8 inches wide, 27.1 inches tall, and 27.3 inches deep.
According to interim development results presented in the filing, the Proteus platform demonstrated significant performance improvements over the commercially available Platinum Pro system. In a study using control peptides, the Proteus system reported a median of 4,094,411 alignments compared to 135,901.5 for the Platinum Pro, representing a 30-fold increase. Additionally, the Proteus system achieved a median false discovery rate (FDR) of 1.36%, which the company notes is 4.8 times lower than the Platinum Pro's 6.58%.
The filing reports that Proteus detected 1.6 to 2.0 times more peptides than Platinum from single chamber runs. In a 24-plex protein mixture, Proteus detected 24 out of 24 proteins, compared to 20.3 on Platinum. The system also demonstrated 4.3 times greater amino acid coverage, detecting 269,864 amino acids per run compared to 63,366 on Platinum.
The company stated that the Proteus launch is on track for the second quarter of 2027. The presentation outlines goals to expand amino acid coverage to detect all 20 amino acids by the end of 2026 and to complete the development of new AI-based algorithms for reference-free sequencing and generalizable post-translational modification detection in 2027.
