New carriers for cell imaging from ibidi

The best and most direct approach to analyse, complex biological processes as migration, stem cell differentiation, or apoptosis is to visualize them. Consequently, imaging plays a crucial and rapidly growing role among today’s biological methods.

Therefore, ibidi, a solutions supplier for bio-microscopy develops, produces and distributes a family of cell culture carriers - so called µ-Slides. These slides are made for the cultivation and subsequent imaging of cells, also in live cell imaging applications.

µ-Slides come with a high quality bottom that matches a coverslip and allow microscopical cell investigations via phase contrast as well as fluorescence; including Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) and Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS).

To address as different processes as immunofluorescence staining, chemotaxis, angiogenesis or the rolling and adhesion of tumor cells demands a new generation of imaging carriers. These slides have three main requirements in common; a) to simulate a surrounding that really represents the natural condition b) to optimise the handling of the assay and c) to improve the optics of the process of interest.

Our answer to these various requests is the µ-Slide family, which consists of 15 different geometries, so far. The volume inside the carriers is minimised ranging from 10 µl up to 1 ml. The slides either fulfil general imaging requirements like the µ-Dishes and the µ-Slide 8 well, or are designed for more specific approaches, as the µ-Slide VI which allows cultivation, fixation, staining and imaging of the cells – all in one carrier. More details about the slides can be found at the ibidi homepage.

The latest slide generation addresses more complex questions for example wound healing/invasion assays, the chemotaxis of slow migrating cells and angiogenesis assays.

The most established assays in the later field are the ‘tube formation’ and the ‘sprouting assay’. In both cases, the formation of new blood vessels is simulated on a gel matrix. Therefore, we developed a ‘well-in-a-well’ structure for the µ-Slide Angiogenesis, which drastically reduces the amount of matrix material per test and solves the classic meniscus problems. The miniaturized system shrinks the required amount of matrix to a value of 10 µl saving more than 80% of the costs per test. The unique geometry of the slide places all the cells in the same focal plane, which strongly improves the imaging quality of the microscopy images.

The µ-Slides represent a new family of devices for the functional analysis of living cells and consist of different slide types for cell-culture and high-end optical microscopy. To find out how ibidi Slides can make your research more effective try the free sample program.