Similar to dental curing where photochemistry is used to trigger a molecular change, Syncell's Microscoop system utilizes microscopy-focused photochemistry to achieve localized photo-induced protein labeling. One approach is opto-biotinylation. With a photosensitizer catalyzing covalent amino acid labeling with a biotin-containing molecule at the focal region of interest (ROI), one can achieve microscopy-guided subcellular protein biotinylation for later streptavidin bead pulldown, effectively creating a subcellular "pickable" microscope.

That is, under a microscope, if one finds a morphological feature of interest of a cell or tissue sample, such as beta amyloid, pTDP43 aggregates, primary cilia, focal adhesion, immune synapses, or others, the image-guided illumination performed by Microscoop with the wavelength suitable for the photochemical reaction results in protein labeling and scooping at the ROI with high spatial precision. Syncell's proprietary photolabeling probes are designed with a fast photochemical reaction rate (<ms) and low non-specific binding.

Mass spectrometry is the method of choice for de novo proteomic discovery. Although the sensitivity of mass spectrometry improves significantly in recent years, the required copy number remains high. So far, there is no protein PCR technology to amplify proteins. Microscoop overcomes the protein amplification problem by brute-force protein accumulation, i.e. by photolabeling proteins one field of view (FOV) at a time across thousands of FOVs fully automatically by mechatronic control. The ultra-content cycle of imaging, pattern generation, and illumination results in protein labeling of millions of illumination spots at the ROIs, such that the following scooping and mass spectrometry analysis yield proteomic identification in high sensitivity, essential for discovering the novel protein composition at an ROI.