Latest App Notes & Case Studies

Researchers are increasingly turning to 3D cell culture techniques, due to the improved physiological relevance of the cellular environment. 3D cell cultures offer a more in vivo-like response to stimuli more closely resembling the behavior of animal models or the human body.

Culturing of various stable cell lines, including bacterial, yeast, hybridoma, insect and mammalian lines, and stem cells, is an important task in the pharmaceutical industry. The cells need to be maintained and expanded for use in cell-based assays, such as siRNA screening, ADME and high content screening, as well as for clone selection.

The use of magnetic beads as the solid phase in a multiplexed ELISA enables high throughput cytokine screening and offers several advantages over common ELISA assays with direct coupling of the analyte to the well-surface.

The BacTiter-Glo Microbial Cell Viability Assay is a luminescence-based assay for the determination of the viability of microbial cells, using quantification of ATP as an indicator of metabolically active, viable cells. The assay protocol comprises the addition of the BacTiter-Glo reagent directly to the sample, and subsequent measurement of luminescence; cell washing, removal of culture medium, and multiple pipetting steps are not required.

Many different research fields, including investigation of early human development processes, disease research, drug discovery and cellular therapy applications, require appropriate in vitro models which can accurately mimic in vivo processes to provide biologically relevant results. Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) offer a powerful system for creating in vitro models to address these questions.

One of the challenges in life sciences research today is to discover methods for running key assays more quickly, more reliably and using lower volumes of reagents and sample, but still with improved sensitivity. One area where this particularly holds true is for traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), whose application provides a useful measurement of antigens, including cytokines and a host of other biomarkers.

This application note compares the performance of the highest and lowest affinity variants using automated methods and the highly-sensitive bottom reading capabilities of an HTS microplate reader. Sensitive detection of the 22F basal signal allows for use of this variant under a broad range of conditions, providing an assay with both superior dynamic range and sensitivity.

Reliable western blot data can be generated only when the proper sample amount of protein is used. Loading too much protein leads to signal saturation in western blots, yet too little produces weak signals.

Cell proliferation and viability assays are widely used in academic and life science laboratories, and are becoming increasingly common in the pharmaceutical industry. Assessment of cellular viability markers in cell-based applications is mandatory for laboratories working with in vitro systems.

Several challenges have surfaced during clinical evaluation of biological drug products due to a commonly associated immune response in patients. Anti-drug antibodies (ADA) are known to be frequently generated during administration of humanized monoclonal antibody therapeutics. A commonly used technology platform for assessment of immunogenicity relies on the bridging immunogenicity assay format typical of the ELISA.