High-Throughput Immunostaining

Combining the visual power of standard immunostaining with the broad scope of the protein array, the Staining Antibody Array from Worcester, Mass.-based Hypromatrix http://www.hypromatrix.com allows researchers to stain different cells in the same sample for dozens of proteins simultaneously. The array, containing about 100 antibodies fixed on a nitrocellulose membrane, is incubated with the tissue to be stained. When the array is removed, the antibodies remain bound to proteins in the tissue and can be detected using secondary antibodies.

Wayne Zhou, a researcher at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, uses the array to compare subcellular protein localizations among several different cell lines. Hypromatrix's arrays, he says, help identify promising proteins to study in more depth using conventional Western blot analysis. "It's not replacing the older method, but it really speeds up the study of the mechanism [of interest]," he says.

Hypromatrix currently is developing image-analysis software to increase throughput, and...