Live Cell Imaging

My friends at Essen Bioscience are taking live cell imaging to new heights. I previously posted their neurite outgrowth solutions (hippcampal neurons).

In this posting, I would like share highlights from the December 2012 issue of "Genetic and Biotechnology News": Essen BioScience’s IncuCyte ZOOM™(live cell imaging in your incubator) and CellPlayer™ reagents enable you to overcome the limitations of static cell based assays. The solutions enable the acquisition, analysis, and quantification of images from living cells that remain unperturbed by the detection method, allowing for repeated measures of cell biology over long periods of time, from days to weeks. This is true Live Content Imaging.

Example: Real-Time Cell Counting in Mixed Cultures.
Cell-based models composed of more than one cell type in the same culture are increasingly recognized as more biologically relevant than monocultures. For example, a recent cancer study illustrated that some stromal cell types confer resistance to tumor cells in coculture, proposing this as a possible mechanism
of tumor resistance in the clinic.

Integrated image processing algorithms provided an independent nuclear count of both cell types continuously in time. The combined attributes of this approach can be used to better elucidate the mechanism and timing of drug responses on cell proliferation in biologically relevant, mixed culture systems.

Capabilities extend to a wide range of other phenotypic assays, including cell death, angiogenesis, neurite dynamics, and cell migration and invasion.

These solutions are have the ability to save time and drive costs out of the drug discovery process. I will keep you posted.