HTFC Screening System Applications

Testing compounds and chemicals for human toxicity in cancer research, as well as immunology and inflammation medicine has evolved over many decades of research beginning with early observational animal models and to more recently with in vitro methods and cell-based assays. Even with the enormous amount of research done over the years, huge challenges still remain in identifying appropriate models to reliably predict human toxicity or adverse events.

Using the HTFC Screening System, we are developing in vitro toxicology applications that measure apoptosis, mitochondrial activity, cell health/death and proliferation in individual cells within a single well sample. In contrast to many current toxicity testing methods using plate reader assays which destroy the cell sample and take a snapshot of the analyte at that moment, the HTFC method allows analysis of intact, single cells in real time.

The IntelliCyt MultiMetric Apoptosis Assay reports 4 different measurements of cellular apoptosis in addition to cell count and:

• Enables concurrent confirmatory analysis of different apoptotic endpoints

• Reduces dependency on timing of apoptosis cascade (the endpoints in the assay are activated at different times)

• Enables the study of relationships between apoptosis endpoints in different cell populations

A key component in the development of effective antibody based therapeutics is the ability to rapidly and effectively screen these libraries to identify molecules that bind specifically to target antigens. Traditional screening methods assess the binding of candidate antibodies to isolated, purified antigens which often do not represent the secondary and tertiary conformation of native target antigens present in the context of the living cell.

With the HTFC Screening System for antibody discovery you can:

• Test for cross reactivity in your primary screen

• Analyze thousands of cells per second

• Make sensitive, high resolution measurements at the single cell level

• Differentiate cellular expression over a large dynamic range

• Multiplex measurements to get more information per well and per cell

In the field of biologics cell line generation, it is essential to identify engineered cell lines that secrete high levels of the desired protein. This process typically involves sequential screening rounds of ELISA titer assays followed by cell counting and characterization assays.

The HTFC multiplexed antibody production screening assay simultaneously determines antibody concentration and assesses cell count and viability in each well of a microtiter plate to:

• Reduce steps in the cell line generation process

• Provide information on specific productivity and cell health (viability)

• Enable scientists to make better decisions about which clones they should spend costly resources for further characterization