Automated, Label-Free Growth Tracking and Culture Management Within Flasks and Multi-Well Plates

Cell-based assays continue to enjoy growing use in basic and applied life sciences research as the importance of assessing cellular processes in biologically meaningful systems has become critical. Quality control considerations for assay optimization include appropriate growth media, optimal cell densities, suitable growth phases, and other factors which likely influence cell-based assay outcomes. Current cell culture practices often rely on manual methods (e.g., manual observation of plates or flasks, hemacytometers) to address these considerations, but manual approaches can be subjective and inaccurate, and are not truly scalable or repeatable. These techniques, and some of their automated alternatives (e.g., automated microscopy, flow cytometry), require invasive harvesting and/or staining of cultures, and measure only a small representative sample of the total population. An ideal solution to these issues would provide a non-invasive, non-destructive manner to assess cell populations within their normal growth environment.
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Rapid, label-free measurement of cell proliferation for compound screening

Cell proliferation is one of the most widely used assay types across a broad range of biological disciplines. Due to their sensitive nature, cell proliferation assays are commonly used to measure cytotoxicity and/or efficacy of drug candidates in oncology, immunology, and stem cells, among other fields.
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Rapid, Label-free Counting and Characterization of Live Embryoid Bodies

Embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell colonies spontaneously differentiate and form three-dimensional multicellular aggregates, called embryoid bodies (EBs), when cultured in suspension without key stem cell growth factors. EB formation is a common intermediate during the in vitro differentiation of ES/iPS cells into specialized cell types. The size distribution of EBs plays a significant role in the efficiency of differentiation and in production yields (Dang et al, 2004; Ng et al, 2005; Falconnet et al, 2006).
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Rapid, Cell-Based in situ Cell Health Assessments

Assays of cell health are the most common assays performed in cell biology. Cell health assays are fundamental to early drug safety evaluation in drug discovery as well as in general maintenance of cells in culture and basic research. Cell health assays fall generally into the categories of cell proliferation, cell stress, apoptosis, and toxicity. Most of these types of assays are usually performed using plate readers without access to cell-level information. By contrast, many High Content Analysis systems include cell health assays which do provide cell-level data using high resolution analysis, but are time consuming and require significant training to execute. The Celigo Cytometer is an easy alternative platform for a wide variety of cell health assays providing cell-level information while maintaining the simplicity of conventional plate reader assays.
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Measurement of Antibody Secretion from Individual Cells for Biomanufacturing

Generation of stable cell lines secreting high levels of protein is a challenging problem and represents a major bottleneck in biomanufacturing, as well as in the large scale generation of antibodies for applications such as biomarker discovery and life science research. Biomanufacturing in mammalian cell lines entails significant effort in identifying and selecting highly secreting clones, and determining optimal media and culture conditions for maintaining high secretion.
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