Tools for Drug Discovery

Cell Culture Media Optimization

Given the fast-paced reality of modern life science research, it is often impractical to consider optimizing cell culture conditions for each and every assay. Yet there is nothing more important to a cell-based assay than the cells themselves. IncuCyte™ can be used as a convenient, sensitive, and precise method to determine optimum growth conditions, including effects due to cell passage, media, serum, substrate, or environment. Furthermore, because IncuCyte™ provides "kinetic" proliferation curves and imagery, very subtle changes can be easily detected.

As an example, we have used this system to measure the effects of serum concentration on the proliferation of our CHO-hERG cell line. The graph below demonstrates that this cell line actually grows faster in the presence of 2% serum vs. the traditional 10% serum concentration.

Information such as this can be used to improve assay performance as well as to greatly reduce the costs associated with unnecessary cell culture supplements. The financial savings can be significant, in the tens of thousands of dollars, for an HTS campaign.

Serum Concentration vs. Growth Rate (CHO-hERG)

IncuCyte™ data displaying mean proliferation curves of CHO-hERG cells as a function of serum concentration. As indicated, these cells proliferate "faster" at 2% serum vs. 10% serum. Error bars are computed from n=12 wells.