CompuCyte Unveils Three-Step Cytometers

Courtesy of CompuCyte The high-content cell-imaging market is heating up thanks to two new product releases from Cambridge, Mass.-based CompuCyte. The new iCys™ Research Imaging Cytometer and iCyte™ Automated Imaging Cytometer both feature CompuCyte's patented laser scanning cytometry (LSC) technology in an inverted format (i.e., the sample is scanned from below, rather than above), enabling analysis of a wide variety of sample formats and facilitating high-throughput screening. The iCyte platform is full-featured and nonconfigurable and can be equipped with an autoloader, making it ideal for pharmaceutical applications. The iCys, which is geared toward academic researchers, features full microscope flexibility and can be configured by the customer. Unlike flow-based cytometry systems, LSC technology employs up to three lasers and four photomultiplier tubes to collect fluorescent and brightfield data from fixed samples on microtiter plates, slides, and petri dishes. The company's proprietary software generates bitmaps for each stage movement, identifies individual cells, and extracts cell feature data. Elena Holden, president and CEO, explains that the new cytometers incorporate features from digital microscopy (for image capture), image processing (for cell identification), and population analysis (for measuring cell metrics) systems. "In part we're a three-step system," she says. MORE INFO THAN FLOW Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz, director of the Brander Cancer Research Institute, Hawthorne, NY, has used an LSC for the last four years and says that the technology offers capabilities that flow cytometry lacks. "There are many applications that flow cannot do. The cell is measured only once and then goes to the sink, then you cannot see the cell, you cannot relocate it," says Darzynkiewicz. Because LSC analyzes samples on fixed media rather than in motion, the instrument allows researchers to relocate individual cells for imaging or further interrogation. It thus can measure time-resolved events such as kinetics of drug uptake or enzyme activity in large populations of individual cells. And, unlike flow cytometry, LSC can analyze tissue as well as cell samples. Darzynkiewicz further notes that a competing technology, fluorescence image analysis, lacks the dynamic range of fluorescence intensity measurement provided by of LSC, because LSC makes use of photomultipliers. Indeed, LSC has broadened the range of experiments that Darzynkiewicz's lab can perform. For instance, Darzynkiewicz and colleagues developed an assay to identify and count micronuclei in individual cells; previously, such work was done manually using a microscope, a time-consuming and error-prone task. "This is a tremendous improvement compared with when you do this by eye," Darzynkiewicz says. He also has used the CompuCyte system to measure apoptosis in the cells of patients with leukemia eight hours after chemotherapy. Apoptosis is usually diagnosed by flow cytometry using characteristics such as cell shape, the presence of DNA strand breaks, or annexin V binding. But this procedure can lead to false positives, as it does not distinguish between truly apoptotic cells and those that have phagocytized apoptotic bodies. "It can lead to significant errors, namely, normal macro-phages in the patients' blood engulf falling-apart, apoptotic cells, and when you measure [with flow cytometry], they look like apoptotic cells," says Darzynkiewicz. However, LSC allows the user to confirm the apoptotic state of cells visually and thus distinguish between the "genuine" and "false" apoptotic cells. "With LSC, to our surprise, we found that in some patients there were quite a number of ... false-positive apoptotic cells," he says. According to Holden, CompuCyte's new systems uniquely combine the advantages of flow cytometry, image analysis, and automated fluorescence microscopy but are not intended to replace these technologies. She adds that the price of both full- featured inverted LSC systems, roughly in the $300,000 (US) range, is comparable to that of flow-cytometry systems as well as camera-based fluorescence imaging systems. Recently, Olympus Optical, Tokyo, announced that it will be the exclusive distributor of CompuCyte's imaging products in Europe. --Aileen Constans function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

CompuCyte Unveils Three-Step Cytometers

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