TTP LabTech’s Acumen Explorer fluorescence microplate cytometer enables high throughput primary and secondary screening of cell-based assays by delivering the object recognition of CCD imagers combined with the fast reads of bulk fluorescence readers. It scans entire wells with up to 4 channels of simultaneous data collection; screening adherent, non-adherent, live or fixed cells. This whole well scanning capability permits improved normalisation of data to total cell number per well (overcoming problems of variable stimulation and random cell distribution), increases the robustness of screening data, enables true cell proliferation studies to be performed and also provides an integral toxicity indicator for each assay. It is ideal for assays requiring a large field of view – such as wound healing or cell colony formation – and is advantageous for rare event detection due to the large numbers of cells analysed.

The Acumen Explorer offers 488 nm or 405 nm laser excitation with an open software architecture, allowing the user to select morphological and fluorescence intensity measurements best suited to extract key cellular data. All SBS-format microplates, from 96 to 1536 wells, are scanned and analysed at equivalent times – typically only 4-10 minutes a plate.

Acumen Explorer’s main applications include protein kinase activation/translocation, cell cycle analysis, mitotic index, apoptosis detection, cell viability testing, reporter gene activation and RNAi screening.