Nanopoint the way to live cell imaging - Analytical Methods & Tools for Lyophilization

Nanopoint the way to live cell imaging
24/05/2007
By Dr Matt Wilkinson
LabTechnologist.com
Nanopoint has released its cellTRAY imaging system that enables time lapse imaging of individual cells while reducing experiment costs.
The new cellTRAY "CT1000" system allows cells to be isolated in micro-wells that reduce the amount of sample and media required while allowing researchers to navigate between different wells containing individual cells so that their response to drug candidates can be monitored.
The CT-1000 is an add-on component to an upright or inverted microscope platform and comes with a scientific grade colour camera for documenting images in 2048x1536 high resolution.
Each cellTRAY is packaged in an autoclavable Petri dish that allows easy loading, incubation, and culturing of cells.
The costs of running cell analysis in Petri dishes, well plates and on microscopes is often very high due to the large amounts of sample, cell culture media and reagents required.
"The cellTRAY uses nanoliters of material and reagents, significantly reducing experiment costs while enabling new applications where the researcher has limited materials, such as primary cells." said Cathy Owen, president of Nanopoint.
The cellTRAY includes 7614 wells on a slide the size of a standard 1"x3" microscope slide and contains microfluidic channels that allow the precise delivery of cell culture media or reagents to the wells.
According to the company, current customers are using the systems to research cellular signalling pathway mapping, hybridoma characterisation, protein expression, cell culture and process development, apoptosis, g-protein coupled receptors, stem cells, insulin-producing beta cells and dendritic cells in the immune system.
Nanopoint has shown that the overall loading efficiency of the wells is over 85 per cent, with the optimal cell concentrations between 105 and 106 cells per ml.
The company has also shown that the cellTRAY does not compromise cells contained in the wells any sooner that cells left in the Petri dish.
This experiment was conducted by measuring the mitochondrial potential of cells using Invitrogen's JC-1 dye that exhibits a fluorescence emission shift from red to green as cells dye.
2005 R&D100 award winning bio-medical and bio-defense technology company Cellular Bioengineering are using the cellTRAY in its attempts to develop a new pharmaceutical drug screening device.
"Our device will use the cellTRAY to test the behaviour of excitable cells in response to thousands of different compounds for drug safety studies," said Dr. Kevin Chinn, director of Cellular Bioengineering.
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