Corning has announced research results using label-free Corning Epic technology to study new areas of cell biology, which may yield important insights for biological research and drug discovery.
According to research published recently in J Biol Chem, investigators from the University of Bonn have uncovered a new way by which receptors regulate themselves and limit the extent of their own cellular responses, thereby preventing over stimulation.
This is a significant development in the current understanding of receptor biology and could help discover better therapeutic drugs.
'To date, it has been impossible to analyse activation of receptors and their various routes of communication with the cell interior in living cells and real time,' said Prof Evi Kostenis, PhD, chair, molecular, cellular and pharmacobiology, Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology, University of Bonn, and senior author of the J Biol Chem study.
'The Epic biosensor has overcome this limitation: it captures receptor-mediated rearrangements of intracellular components and translates such rearrangements into specific optical signals,' he added.
Corning's Epic system is a high-throughput, label-free screening system.
It uses optical biosensors technology to measure a broad range of biochemical and cell-based targets.
The system was introduced in 2006 and has been deployed at customer sites in North America, Europe and Asia.
