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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May
21, 2003
Guava
Technologies, a biotechnology company, announces a new suite of
single cell tests (assays) for biologists to easily gain a complete
and highly quantitative profile of the stages of cell death or apoptosis.
Powerful
new tests enable biologists to get an in-depth look at Cell Death
...
Guava
Technologies, a biotechnology company, announces a new suite of
single cell tests (assays) for biologists to easily gain a complete
and highly quantitative profile of the stages of cell death or apoptosis.
These
tests/assays are designed to run on Guava's unique, patented cell
analysis systems. Guava Technologies provides life science researchers
easy-to-use, affordable single cell analysis systems they can use
at their benchtops - the Guava PCA and PCA-96 systems.
"Historically,
apoptosis assays have suffered from being only loosely quantitative,
as well as being subject to multiple wash steps where dying cells
can be lost," said Maureen Murphy, associate member in the
Department of Pharmacology, Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia,
PA, USA). "The beauty of the Guava [system] is that, following
minimal manipulation of cells, it generates reliable and reproducible
quantitation of apoptotic cells. An added bonus has been the user-friendly
aspects of the Guava PCA [system]."
The
three assays that comprise the new Guava Apoptosis Suite enable
researchers to examine three separate biological aspects of cell
death to assess whether each cell is in the early- mid- or late-stages
of apoptosis. The suite includes assays for membrane changes (annexin
V), activation of caspase enzymes, and DNA fragmentation (TUNEL).
Along with Guava's best-selling cell counting assay, ViaCount, this
powerful combination of assays enables researchers to use different
cellular markers to detect and examine cells at various stages of
progression through apoptosis, or "cell death." Furthermore,
Guava's assays require only minimal numbers of cells, and include
optimized reagent kits, and easy-to-use software, in addition to
the instrument used to analyse the cell samples. Guava's turnkey
approach to delivering sophisticated cell-based assays results in
minimal training requirements, and significant acceleration of the
assay and its result.
Different
cell types die at different rates with slightly varied death programs
or apoptotic response, a suite of assays is therefore critical for
fully characterising the mechanisms of biological responses. By
designing a comprehensive suite of apoptosis assays specifically
for use with their PCA systems, Guava have brought the power of
apoptosis studies to the laboratory benchtop.
A
new technical note is available to researchers demonstrating how
the Guava Apoptosis Suite and Guava ViaCount assays can be used
to monitor apoptosis in cell cultures more accurately and with higher
resolution on the Guava PCA systems. This technical note can be
accessed directly from the Guava Technologies website at www.guavatechnologies.com
under the literature request section.
Guava
and ViaCount are registered trademarks of Guava Technologies, Inc.
PCA, Nexin, and MultiCaspase are trademarks of Guava Technologies,
Inc.
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