Suite of single cell assays allows biologists to gain a complete and highly quantitative profile of the stages of apoptosis
Guava Technologies announces a new suite of single cell tests (assays) for biologists to easily gain a complete and highly quantitative profile of the stages of cell death or apoptosis. These tests/assays are designed to run on Guava's unique, patented cell analysis systems.
Guava Technologies provides life science researchers easy-to-use, affordable single cell analysis systems they can use at their benchtops - the Guava PCA and PCA-96 systems.
"Historically, apoptosis assays have suffered from being only loosely quantitative, as well as being subject to multiple wash steps where dying cells can be lost," said Maureen Murphy, associate member in the Department of Pharmacology, Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia, USA).
"The beauty of the Guava system is that, following minimal manipulation of cells, it generates reliable and reproducible quantitation of apoptotic cells.
An added bonus has been the user-friendly aspects of the Guava PCA." The three assays that comprise the new Guava Apoptosis suite enable researchers to examine three separate biological aspects of cell death to assess whether each cell is in the early- mid- or late-stages of apoptosis.
The suite includes assays for membrane changes (annexin V), activation of caspase enzymes, and DNA fragmentation (Tunel).
Along with Guava's best-selling cell counting assay, ViaCount, this powerful combination of assays enables researchers to use different cellular markers to detect and examine cells at various stages of progression through apoptosis, or cell death.
Furthermore, Guava's assays require only minimal numbers of cells, and include optimised reagent kits, and easy-to-use software, in addition to the instrument used to analyse the cell samples. Guava's turnkey approach to delivering sophisticated cell-based assays results in minimal training requirements, and significant acceleration of the assay and its result.
Different cell types die at different rates with slightly varied death programsme or apoptotic response, a suite of assays is therefore critical for fully characterising the mechanisms of biological responses.
By designing a comprehensive suite of apoptosis assays specifically for use with their PCA systems, Guava says it has brought the power of apoptosis studies to the laboratory benchtop.
A new technical note is available to researchers demonstrating how the Guava Apoptosis suite and Guava ViaCount assays can be used to monitor apoptosis in cell cultures more accurately and with higher resolution on the Guava PCA systems. This technical note can be accessed directly from the Guava Technologies website under the literature request section.
