News Room

Top European scientists demonstrate CYTOO’s technology increases sensitivity and speed in cell analysis

Grenoble, France, June 15, 2010 – CYTOO SA, a developer and marketer of innovative enabling technologies and products for high content cell analysis (HCA), today announced the first results from the Institut Curie confirming a major advance in cell analysis made possible by adhesive micropatterns, a technology for which Cytoo holds an exclusive worldwide license.

The Institut Curie team demonstrated that a rigorous quantification of the cell-wide internal organization could be obtained using adhesive micropatterns. Adhesive micropatterns control internal cell organization. In addition, they could decipher a protein re-distribution upon a drug treatment that was previously undetectable in conventional cell culture conditions. The scientific team, led by Dr. Bruno Goud, research director of the subcellular structure and cellular dynamics laboratory, was also able to obtain significant results by analyzing only 12 to 20 cells, compared to the hundreds or thousands usually needed in traditional cell culture conditions.

“With this study, we have now unequivocally demonstrated that controlling cell adhesion is going to be critical in all fields involving Quantitative Cell analysis,” commented Michel Bornens, CSO at Cytoo and co-author of the article entitled: “Probabilistic density maps to study global endomembrane organization” published in Nature Methods (online publication, May 31, 2010).

The results of the study, also named “Probabilistic density maps to study global endomembrane organization”, indicates that the use of adhesive micropatterns will benefit research by offering increased insight, sensitivity and relevance in deciphering protein functions and cell mechanics.

Cytoo believes that for those involved in drug discovery, such results would translate into significantly more hits and more meaningful data in cell-based screening, while requiring analysis of significantly fewer cells per condition. It would also enable biologists to detect effects at much lower doses.

“We are extremely encouraged by the Institut Curie results using adhesive micropatterns,” says Alexandra Fuchs, co-CEO at Cytoo. “We want to bring to the attention of the market that leading centers in the world are now using our products and that this technology is enabling them to detect and analyze cell functions that were previously impossible to detect and analyze. We believe that our technology will have a huge impact in the drug discovery world by increasing assay sensitivity, generating statistically relevant data, and accelerating analysis.”

More than one hundred researchers in private laboratories and leading research centers around the world, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Harvard University, and Dana Farber Cancer Center, have adopted Cytoo’s HCA products. Cytoo expects more results of this kind to be published.

Cytoo addresses critical needs in pharma and biotech drug discovery as cell based assays and high content screening (HCS) are among the most dynamic fields in life science research markets (Sources: “Worldwide Cell Based Screening & Analysis Market for Bio-Pharma Drug Discovery”, Fuji Keizai 2007 and “High Content Analysis: Technologies, Applications, Market Analysis”, Insight Pharma Reports 2007). However, quantitative cell analysis for drug discovery has been hampered by the huge variability in cell shape and behavior when using common cell culture ware such as standard well plates and petri dishes. Even with huge cohorts of cells and sophisticated image algorithms, expected effects are too often buried in the noise, thus hampering sensitivity, throughput and reliability of the screens, according to Fuchs.

Results published in the Nature Methods article also highlight the advantages of cellular normalization using micropatterning and show differences in the results in the same statistical tests that were performed on non-patterned cells.

The Institut Curie team found that for strong phenotypes (an observable characteristic or trait of an organism), such as Golgi-dispersion after nocodazole-treatment, significant differences were detected, although eight times more cells were needed. On the other hand, subtle differences, such as those seen in the treatment with cytochalasin D, were not detectable in non-patterned cells. They concluded that micropatterning in combination with computational analysis provides a powerful tool to detect subtle changes in steady-state endomembranous organization.

Cytoo presented results of the study in an “Advances in Assay Technology” poster session at the recent Society for Biomolecular Sciences Conference in Arizona (April 11-15, 2010), showing that effects of blebbistatin (a model drug) could be detected at a concentration rate 500 times lower than had previously been used while analyzing ten times fewer cells. The study was conducted using a straightforward easy analysis algorithm on Cytoo’s L adhesive micropatterns.




2010-06-15          download doc           web site link

June 15, 2010 at CRG Barcelona (Advanced Light Microscopy Unit). Starting from 10:00 am in several sessions of 1h

Using CYTOO’s Cell Normalization Technology and New Leica HCS A Software for Fast and Reliable High Content Cell Analysis


Reducing assay variability and developing efficient high throughput acquisition and image analysis methodologies are key in reaching high quality quantitative cell analysis both in fundamental cell biology and in a vast range of High Content Analysis (HCA) assays. This practical workshop will introduce researchers to a new powerful technology based on CYTOO’s adhesive micropatterns which normalize cell architecture down to their internal organization as well as to the recently introduced software for highly automated image acquisition from Leica Microsystems. The combination of both tools enables efficient high-throughput HCA. The workshop will focus on the practical aspects of using micropatterned CYTOOchips™ in a model “dose-response” drug assay. During the session, after a short presentation of the both technologies we will demonstrate how to (i) efficiently automate the image acquisition with cells plated on micropatterned CYTOOchips using Leica HSC A software controlling a Leica SP5 system; (ii) apply various image cell analysis algorithms to measure parameters of interest within individual cells (using ImageJ macros); (iii) obtain statistically relevant data using only several dozens of cells. The presented technologies could be used for various cell-based assays both for fixed and live cell imaging.

Venue

Advanced Light Microscopy Unit (5th floor)
CRG - Centre for Genomic Regulation
Dr. Aiguader, 88
08003 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
www.crg.es

Registration

If you are interested in attending, please contact timo.zimmermann@crg.es to register.

Download the pdf by clicking below

2010-06-02          download doc

Colloque « Imaging The Cell »
Grenoble, 9-11 Juin 2010

Les techniques d'imagerie cellulaire sont actuellement en plein développement et permettent une
analyse très détaillée des phénomènes biologiques tant au niveau de l'animal, la cellule et même la
molécule. En particulier, les méthodes d’imagerie de fluorescence sont des techniques
particulièrement adaptées à l’étude des interactions macromoléculaires et de la dynamique
macromoléculaire dans les cellules vivantes. La maitrise de ces techniques est indispensable à
l’avancée des projets de recherche actuels.
Ce colloque permettra de faire le point sur ces techniques d'imagerie et de les faire découvrir aux
participant lors de conférences données par des grands spécialistes français et internationaux, et
d’ateliers thématiques. Ces ateliers thématiques couvrent une grande partie des techniques d’imagerie
cellulaire de pointe et permettent aux participants une approche pratique de ces techniques. Ces
ateliers sont animés, soit par des spécialistes de la technique, soit par les sociétés de microscopie. De
ce fait les participants (chercheurs, ingénieurs, étudiants) repartiront avec des connaissances théoriques
et pratiques de ces différentes technologies.
Les conférences ont lieu le matin dans l’amphithéatre de l’IAB et les ateliers se déroulent au sein des
plates-formes de microscopie et répartis sur différents sites (IAB, GIN, TIMC, IBS, LSP,
MINATECH, LAPM).
La Société Française de Biologie Cellulaire organise ce colloque dans des laboratoires de l’Université
Joseph Fourier, du CNRS et de l’INSERM de Grenoble, du fait de la présence dans ces laboratoire de
plate-formes technologiques de pointe comme la plate-forme IBiSA Imagerie Science du Vivant de
l’Université Joseph Fourier, la plateforme Nanomonde de MINATEC, dotées de nombreux
équipements en matière de microscopie.
Le GRD2588 CNRS, groupement de recherche fédérateur de la communauté scientifique
interdisciplinaire autour de la microscopie fonctionnelle du vivant est un partenaire de cette
manifestation.

2010-06-01

SBS 16th Annual Conference & Exhibition
April 11 - 15, 2010
Phoenix, Arizona

Come meet us at our booth 231 or at our poster B213: "Adhesive Micropatterns for High Content
Screening: a case study."

We'll be presenting our poster on Wednesday, April 15 between the hours of 12:00pm -
2:30pm.

2010-03-12

A Half-day conference prior to the 10th International ELMI Meeting

This symposium has the goal to bring together leading scientists from academia and industry, developing and using adhesive micropatterns, and biologists with a strong interest in applying such cell environment engineering techniques in their scientific research.

The meeting will cover scientific results obtained on adhesive micropatterns in a wide range of application fields including cell polarity and cell division, primary cilium and organelle morphology, membrane trafficking and cytoskeleton/microtubule dynamics, cell phenotyping and cell screening.

A maximum of 60 participants of the workshop will be registered on a first come first serve basis. Both micropattern users and those who are interested in the technology and its applications are welcome. In order to achieve a maximum of interaction between participants, a poster session will be organized and 5 oral presentations by meeting participants will be selected from submitted poster abstracts.

The participants of the EMBO Workshop Advanced Light Microscopy Techniques and Their Applications - 10th International ELMI Meeting that is held from 18 to 20 May, 2010 may register for the Cell Architects Symposium as an optional pre-conference meeting on the ELMI meeting website. Note that the same poster may be applied both for Cell Architects and the ELMI meeting.

Registration is now open. Click on the link below to register.

2010-02-24          download doc           web site link