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Screening hybridoma libraries for antibodies that bind to cell surface antigens is a time and resource intensive process. The current screening workflow often involves several individual testing steps, including different biochemical tests for binding and specificity, followed by cell-based assays.

IntelliCyt has developed a “mix-and-measure” intact cell assay for primary screening that simultaneously assesses antigen binding and cross-reactivity. This highly sensitive assay:

• Measures antibodies in their natural conformation
• Reduces workflow steps
• Reduces the potential for false negatives.

To download the application brief and learn more, submit the following information.

The MultiCyt Hybridoma Screening Kit is a powerful, mix-and-measure solution for primary screening of hybridoma libraries, designed to test antibody binding directly on living cells. This high-throughput solution allows scientists to detect antibodies that bind to unique conformational epitopes that may be missed with current ELISA assays. 

The MultiCyt Count and Capture – IgG Secretion Screening Kit is a novel multiplexed screening assay that provides a single platform solution for researchers assessing productivity of antibody-secreting cell lines.

By simultaneously measuring the amount of secreted protein and providing a viable cell count, the amount of antibody produced can be determined on a per-cell basis in one assay, saving valuable time and resources in the cell line generation process.

The MultiCyt Cell Encoder Screening Kit enables multiple cell lines to be color coded and combined into screening plates to test target-specific clone binding characteristics and select those with the greatest promise for pre-clinical and clinical trials. Using the HTFC Screening System, the cell lines are combined and tested within the same wells, enabling scientists to simultaneously analyze the biology of each encoded cell line.

“The new screening assays take advantage of our proprietary technologies to quickly make concurrent measurements on individual cells at rates of thousands of cells per second, providing anywhere from 1-6 readouts per sample,” said Thomas Duensing, Ph.D., Vice President of Product Development.

The IntelliCyt approach to screening assays addresses the need to obtain more answers with smaller amounts of sample. By using far less sample than current methods, coupled with more information, the IntelliCyt assay kits, in conjunction with the HTFC platform, achieve significant productivity increases and provide better decision making capabilities. “Our technology provides a valuable solution to the therapeutic antibody community by answering multiple questions on a single platform, addressing bottlenecks resulting from repetitive screening testing on multiple platforms, as well as reducing costs and improving time to results. Our technology will redefine what users can accomplish from their screening campaigns,” said R. Terry Dunlay, CEO of IntelliCyt.

About IntelliCyt Corporation
IntelliCyt Corporation develops and markets innovative high-throughput cell and bead-based screening solutions for use throughout the life sciences. The Company uses proprietary technologies to create instrumentation, assays, and software products that dramatically increase the speed and decrease the cost of detecting and measuring cells and beads. IntelliCyt’s products address a pervasive need among pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life science research laboratories to achieve increased productivity while adapting to the accelerating pace and increasing complexity of modern life sciences. The company’s corporate headquarters are located at 9620 San Mateo Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113. For more information, please visit www.intellicyt.com.

Contact
IntelliCyt Corporation
Linda Trinkle, Vice President, Marketing
505-345-9075
ltrinkle [at] intellicyt [dot] com

1. Individual, intact cell measurements
2. Multiplexed assays per well and cell
3. Morphological phenotyping
4. Artifact rejection and subpopulation isolation

These features and their utility formed the basis for countless novel assays, creating new ways of assessing biology from cell inception to cell death and everything in between.  I am extremely proud to have been a part of it.
There were, however, limitations to High Content Imaging.  The underlying engine of microscopy meant that only cells associated with the bottom of the well, either growing on it like adherent cells or associated with it by settling, centrifuging, or immobilizing in a matrix (like suspension cells) could be focused on accurately enough to acquire the images needed.  For suspension cells which are biologically sensitive to contact with the plate, this caused a great deal of variation, so adherent cells have become the norm in HCI assay formats. Another limitation of the approach lies in the battle between resolution of the objects and the number of objects collected. With imaging, you can’t have both, so you either end up with a compromise to collect a lot of low resolution objects (if your assay does not require higher resolution) or you end up collecting a lot of high resolution images in order to get enough objecst to statistically represent your biology.  Unfortunately, there is a cost associated with storage and analysis of large number of images and many of you have multiple terabyte server farms of images and distributed processing engines whirring away to analyze those images.
But ‘high content’ is still fantastic because of the kinds of data that can be generated and cross correlated in the well and sometimes to the cell.  But not having a high content screening tool optimized for suspension cells always bugged me…and by the number of inquiries about sticking cells down that I would get from the high content community, I guess it bugged you too.
But there is high content technology, as defined by the bullets above, for suspension cells that has been in use for the last 30+ years, and of course I am talking about flow cytometry.  Flow cytometry has all the attributes of a high content approach, but was designed and optimized for suspension cells, beads, microbes, and mixtures of these objects. I have read many articles on our industry over the years and flow cytometry is always mentioned as a great technology, but lacking the capacity and simplicity to be a true screening tool. Imagine my delight when I found out, through the grapevine, that IntelliCyt, headed up by one of my early Cellomics  colleagues, was commercializing technology that would overcome the limitations of current flow cytometry by combining their novel approach to high speed sample loading with a revolutionary, and widely accepted flow cytometer that dramatically reduced complexity, adjustments, and cost.  As I discovered more about the potential and future directions this technology was about to take, it became apparent to me that I had found the missing link— a technology to fill the gap in the high content toolbox.  All the projects to stick cells down, all the times we treated cells like “nails” because we only had a high content “hammer”, could be solved by the introduction of a high content suspension screening platform!  After a lot of soul searching, I decided that this was too compelling of an opportunity to ignore, and I moved by family out to the desert of New Mexico and joined IntelliCyt as the Director of Product Management.
So, this new high content tool needed a name, something short and sweet that linked the technology to the high content family of tools but still retained the essence of what makes it special.  High Capacity Flow (HCF) is the name we chose, because “capacity” is the value we bring to a technique that was high content years before we invented high content. Our vision at IntelliCyt is that HCF and HCI become a complementary set of tools used by the high content community, where suspension screening releases an entire class of cells, beads, microbes, and mixtures from the shackles of compromise.
More to come on the advantages of HCF and where it might be used to optimize your high content workflow….