Latest App Notes & Case Studies

Antibodies are central mediators of the immune system, IgG being the most dominant. Binding of IgG/antigen complexes to membrane-bound Fc? receptors triggers a cellular immune response. Alterations in the Fc portion of the antibody by introducing mutations can lead to complete abolition of Fc? receptor binding. This describes the development of a cellbased TR-FRET assay to determine the simultaneous binding of an antibody to its antigen and huFc?RIIIa present on different cells.

Adenosine diphosphate (ADP) is an important mediator of cellular metabolism that is essential for maintaining energy levels. The Transcreener ADP2 TR-FRET Red Assay is intended for the detection of ADP production by any kinase or ATPase, and has been developed specifically for high throughput screening applications.

Technological advances in the last couple of years have enabled 3D scaffolds to be engineered that offer a real proxy for the in vivo environment which can be easily and routinely used in a cell culture laboratory.

Alvetex Scaffold enables cells to develop natural, in vivo-like intercellular interactions, providing an ideal environment for real three-dimensional growth and nutrient exchange that is comparable to intra-capillary exchange in living tissues.

Manual screening processes are very costly and time consuming. This ambitious project for high throughput screening (HTS) of cellulase-producing fungal strains demonstrates the high capacity and unique features of the Freedom EVO colony picking workstation. The picking of fungi is more complex than for typical bacterial colonies, and requires advanced selection criteria to be combined with complex pipetting and a tip movement that mimics the manual picking process.

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.