acumen^® Cellista Laser Scanning Imaging Cytometer by SPT Labtech

acumen® Cellista – the fastest high content screening system.

acumen Cellista is a microplate-based laser scanning imaging cytometer designed to provide rapid, whole well, content-rich cytometric and image based analysis. It has your high content screening data imaged and ready in as little as 5 minutes, making it the fastest HCS system available today.

acumen is the go-to system for phenotypic screening, where it complements existing imaging expertise and maximises workflow throughputs. It images the whole well and provides both cytometric data and open source TIFFs allowing rapid, content rich data to identify compounds of interest. Where number of compounds screened is critical, wells of interest can be selected for more in depth analysis using the TIFF images.

Benefits of acumen Cellista include:

• Fast
  • profile compound libraries in hours which is not effected by well density or microplate type (96- to 3456-well plates)
  • unique and patented method of simultaneous data capture and analysis allowing results to be obtained immediately
  • simultaneous scanning and generation of TIFF files
• Effortless
  • excels at hard to automate assays like rare event detection or cell cycle analysis
  • software is template-based for ease of use
  • exported TIFFs are OME-compliant for immediate use with third party software
  • can be integrated with other imagers to fit into screening workflows
• High content – triple laser excitation (405, 488, 561 or 640 nm) to perform multiplexed assays
• Whole well scanning – acumen Cellista has an F-theta widefield objective lens which can scan entire wells and report data for all cells in a single shot
  • scans large objects (such as cell colonies) without the need for image stitching or Z-stacks
  • provides rapid and robust high content data without the need to stitch images together
  • generates statistically robust data from heterogenous cell populations
  • normalises biological responses to a total cell number
  • detects rare events
• High sensitivity – laser excitation in conjunction with photomultiplier tubes (PMT) gives a broad range of dynamic range of fluorescence
• Maintain high throughputs – by using simultaneous data capture and analysis acumen Cellista can easily achieve throughputs of over 300,000 wells a day
• Reduced data storage – data generated from image files requires large data storage capacity. acumen has the option to generate just cytometric data, or both cytometric and image data
• Reduce costs – through assay miniaturisation
• Integration – combine and maximise the power of the imaging and analysis assets already available to you in your lab

acumen can be used as part of several types of workflow:

1. Primary screening of compounds or RNAi libraries to produce cytometric data for further analysis
2. TIFF image files generated for further investigation using a third party image analysis package. Used for complex studies such as angiogenesis
3. ‘Wells-to-cells’ – primary screen provides a list of hit wells to be rescanned on a high resolution imager

acumen Cellista has been proven to be a highly successful screening platform in the field of oncology based on assays that can be performed in the following areas:

• Cell signalling – protein kinase profiling, protein translocation, reporter gene activation, GPCR screening
• Cell health – cell viability, apoptosis, cytotoxicity, proliferation
• Cell biology – cell cycle analysis, mitotic index, colony formation, cell migration, cell invasion, chemotaxis, angiogenesis
• RNAi library profiling – phenotypic screens can be applied to genome-wide RNAi screens; screen a genome in as little as a day
• 3D cultures – large depth of focus allows easy imaging of cell colonies, spheroids, single cell cultures grown in 3D collagen/scaffolds
• Systems biology – acumen can easily analyse whole small organisms such as C. elegans, or zebrafish