Cell Culture Quality Control
Consistent, optimized cell culture is vital to the success of cell-based assays. Current approaches available to monitor cell culture include: visual inspection by microscope, manual cell counting with a hemacytometer and automated cell counting. In contrast, IncuCyte™ monitors growth by gathering phase contrast images of the cells within your incubator. These images are used to generate reliable metrics which provide a consistent and precise measure of cell proliferation over time. IncuCyte™ eliminates the human error, invasiveness and labor-intensive aspects of cell culture monitoring while, at the same time, offering the power of "kinetic" measurement.
Characteristic Growth Curves for Different Cell Types
Shown to the above are representative kinetic proliferation curves obtained using IncuCyte™. Time updates were gathered every 3 hours, and the plot displays monolayer confluence vs. time. Observe that each cell type clearly displays it own, unique temporal signature. IncuCyte™ can be used to precisely monitor cell behavior over time without ever having to remove the cells from the incubator.
IncuCyte™ enables detection of subtle changes in cellular morphology which currently are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify without an image. This feature enables users to easily track subtle deviations in culture caused by cell passage, media, serum, labware or environmental conditions.
Changes in Cellular Morphology
CHO cells, plated under different conditions, exhibit different cellular morphology. Such subtle differences are captured and stored by the IncuCyte™.
Growth Kinetics vs Passage
Cellular behavior/properties can change with repeated passaging. Use the IncuCyte™ to monitor these changes. Displayed to the right are CHO cells growing at passage 12 and at passage 30. The lower passage CHO cells grow significantly faster than those at the high passage number.
In addition to generating kinetic proliferation curves, IncuCyte™ provides labor-free, digital archiving of cell images over time. The electronic record-keeping features of the IncuCyte™ software facilitate easy reporting, data-base searching and archiving of these data. Data are collected automatically, around the clock, from within your laboratory incubator requiring no further effort on your part.
Electronic Record Keeping with IncuCyte™
- Automatic image collection
- Electronic labeling of cell culture labware
- Automatic data archiving
- Electronic keyword search & retrieval software
- Drag & Drop of graphs, images, metrics into MS WordŽ, ExcelŽ or e-mail
- Proliferation curve generation and comparison tools
- Single image (JPEG) or image movie export
Cell Lines Investigated with IncuCyte™
