Neurolight Red™ and NeuroPrime™: New Enabling Reagents for Live Cell Imaging in Neurobiology

Stop by the Essen BioScience booth #1426 to learn more about their specialized solutions for kinetic live cell imaging in neurobiology, including the new neuronal labeling reagent, NeuroLight Red™, the NeuroPrime™ Cell Kit, and the NeuroTrack™ Software Module for IncuCyte ZOOM™.

Essen’s groundbreaking IncuCyte ZOOM™ instrument is the first live-cell imaging system designed to operate inside a standard incubator, allowing scientists to program an imaging schedule, load culture and assay plates into the instrument, close the incubator door and walk away. The fully-automated system is ideal for long-term assays such as neurite outgrowth that require days or weeks of imaging. IncuCyte ZOOM’s proprietary HD phase-contrast imaging method provides enhanced image quality in 96- and 384-well plates, essential for neuroscientists who want to use a label-free assay to measure changes in neurites and branching of neurons in mono-culture.

For researchers working with mixed cultures of neurons and astrocytes, Essen introduces two new products at Neuroscience 2014. The first is the novel lentiviral based live-cell neuronal labeling reagent NeuroLight Red™for long term expression of red fluorescent protein (mKate2) in neuronal cell bodies and neurites. NeuroLight Red™ ensures highly-efficient, yet non-disruptive labeling of neurons over days and weeks and enables the kinetic quantification of neurite length and branching in the presence of astrocytes and other non-neuronal cell types such as microglia.

The second new product is the NeuroPrime™ Cell Kit, the first commercially available, turnkey cryopreserved neuronal/astrocyte co-culture kit. Each cell kit contains cryopreserved cell vials of rat forebrain neurons and rat astrocytes, and a vial of the NeuroLight Red™ labeling reagent. A fully validated protocol for thawing, labeling and measuring neurite dynamics for up to 2 weeks in a 96-well format using IncuCyte ZOOMTM is also included. Assay kits are lot controlled and validated for optimal labeling and assay performance when used according to the protocol supplied.

The NeuroTrack Software Module for IncuCyte allows scientists to perform detailed analysis of neuronal cell metrics including neurite length, cell body area and branch points, both for mono-culture phase contrast and co-culture fluorescence assays. The metrics can be visualized in full time course plots for individual wells of 96- or 384-well plates. The software can also be used to create time-lapse movies of the images, allowing researchers to quickly review data over time. See an example movie of neurite outgrowth here.

Please visit Essen BioScience’s poster at Neuroscience 2015 to talk to their neuroscientists and see data using this co-culture system.

Sunday, Nov.16, 1:00 – 5:00 PM Session 226, Poster 06

About: Essen BioScience, Inc. provides instrumentation, reagents and analysis software which enable researchers to perform quantitative live cell kinetic imaging and evaluate a wide variety of cellular processes, over time, within the standard laboratory incubator. Whether evaluating common processes such as proliferation, viability, and apoptosis or those that are functionally-specific, such as, T cell-mediated killing, neurite outgrowth, chemotaxis/migration, or stem cell differentiation, Essen BioScience provides the tools researchers need. These include the IncuCyte ZOOM™, an automated imaging system for enabling the remote observation and quantification of cell behavior over time by automatically collecting and analyzing images in real-time around the clock, and Essen’s CellPlayer™ kits and non-perturbing fluorescent reagents, optimized for the IncuCyte ZOOM.

Visit Essen BioScience to learn more at www.essenbioscience.com