DRAQ5 by Biostatus Limited

"The product is perfect to be used in in vivo applications. It allowed cell nuclei segmentation from intravital fluorescence images. OK both in mammalians and chicks."

"DRAQ5 is generally easy to use. The spectra are in long wavelength that can be paired with many other fluorophores and thus our choice of nucleus dye for confocal imaging. However, the performance is not very stable, sometime it can be very dim and unspecific staining outside the nucleus can be seen. The product (from Thermo Fisher) is very expensive. It will be good if the price can be more reasonable."

"DRAQ5 is very easy to use. You resuspend cells in PBS, stain cells in dark for 1-3 minutes, then you can image cells directly (no rinsing is needed). The product is kind of expensive, but it is worth it. The dye can be excited by either 488 or 639 nm laser, but emits in far red, so it won't interfere with GFP."

"We achieved high quality and reproducible data."

"The DRAQ5 reagent is very easy to use. I have used it together with DAPI for counterstaining the cellular nuclei in various cell types like SHSY-5Y, SKN-SH, U2OS and HeLa. The reagent is robust and the staining is perfectly reproducible. I had used the probe in a variety of application like Fluorescent Microscopy, FISH and combined FISH with ICC. The probe lifetime is commendable even after multiple exposures. You can find images with application of DRAQ5 in my publication here - Chanda, K., Jana, N.R. & Mukhopadhyay, D. Receptor tyrosine kinase ROR1 ameliorates Aβ1–42 induced cytoskeletal instability and is regulated by the miR146a-NEAT1 nexus in Alzheimer’s disease. Sci Rep 11, 19254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98882-0"

"The product has worked very well - giving reproducible results."

"This product is easy to use and gives us a nice consistent nuclear signal in our engineered tissue models. Since it emits in far-red, it's great for multiplexing with common fluorophores that emit in green/blue/red."

"We have run high-content compound screening and used this product for cell counting. It works in every experiment: the staining is simple, rapid and efficient, the signal is strong, it does not interfere with other probes."

"I acquired high-quality results."

"This product is very easy to use and can stain nuclei with high sensitivity."

"Had no issues with the DRAQ5 and it produced reliable and repeatable staining of DNA."

"It’s a very good product for our application. It is very easy to use."

"Easy to use, very potent, just add to your cells and their nuclei will turn blue. Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

"The product is reliable and works out great. It gives me consistent staining results with high quality. It stains nuclei easily and produces clear images suitable for publication."

"Stable and specific signals for live cell nucleus imaging. Very easy to use."

"The product was highly effective in helping us identify the nuclei of both live/dead cells. I will be purchasing this product again and believe it to be highly reliable and effective."

"I am very satisfied with the product and I often recommend it to other researchers, especially due to its excitation/emission spectrum. In fact, it is very suitable for those who work with autofluorescent scaffolds/biomaterials. It is easy to use, it is a vital dye and marks the cell nucleus well, although sometimes it provides a slightly dirty staining."

"This product is very easy to use and always offer reproducible results."

"The DRAQ5 is an easy usable marker to stain nucleus. I used it in mammalian cells. It is a really good product, maybe a little expensive."

"Good cell staining to characterize the model by means of confocal microscopy."

"Easy to use. Reproducible. Slight improvement would be to have an already diluted form."

"The product is easy to use and the procedure is not complicated. We used this stain to evaluate the enucleation rate of cultured red blood cell differentiated from CD34+ cells."

"DRAQ5 is an easy-to-use product that is ready straight from the bottle and just have to be diluted to a working concentration. As with almost all dyes and antibodies for immunofluorescence, it has to be tested for the ideal concentration but the product came with suggested working solution concentrations that proved to be very useful as I had to do just a couple of tests to establish the working conditions. The dye is very bright and long-lasting, and the reagent itself lasts for long time at 4 degrees C."

"The product is easy to use and labeled my cells very well. I recommend using it in cell assays such as image flow cytometry."

"It is very easy to use. Only takes 15 minutes."

"Love DRAQ5 for simple and bright nuclear staining of live or fixed cells for confocal microscopy. Minimal crossover in typical filter sets."

"I've been using DRAQ5 for some time, I like it very much, it's efficient (bright and quite stable), but I wish it was cheaper."

"Easy to use, reliable nuclear stain. Can be used for the analysis of cell counts on primary human monocytes, monocyte-derived macrophages and dendritic cells. One vial is enough for a long time as it is used in a 1000x dilution."

"Draq5 is very easy to use and gives reproducible resutls. In each immunostaining that I used Draq5 always worked fine."

"We have used DRAQ5 to follow the bacterial distribution on wooden material. Our results are cited in (doi:10.3390/antibiotics9050225) and (doi:10.1007/s00107-018-1294-z)."

"If there is the need to visualize fixed nuclei by confocal microscopy in the far red, then Draq5 is the stain of choice. Of course it is not as bright as DAPI and probably the "gain" and "laser power" should be considerably increased. Also some leakage of staining in cytoplasm could be observed, but still it is very reliable for staining. For the best results, dilution 1:500 in 0.1M PBS (alternatively with 0.3% Triton X) should be used."

"The product is easy to use and provides clear live/dead staining of multiple sample types."

"Good nuclear marker for single- and double-labelling immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy on frozen and paraffin-embedded sections. Staining disappears in sections pre-treatment with formic acid (as in prion diseases). Sometimes, non-specific staining of other structures."

"We used DRAQ5 because of its far-red fluorescence and suitability for live/fixed-cell imaging. In general, it suits our needs as we can't find a commercial alternative out there. It is easy to use, but sometimes the fluorescence can be very dim and needs some adjustment to make it visible. We bought it from ThermoFisher/Invitrogen so it is quite expensive."

"We have been using the product for a while and will now use it for most of our biological studies. The reproducibility was good. I have already recommended the product to my colleagues. Perfect value for money."

"DRAQ5 is easy to use and gives reproducible results. It can be added to the cells at the last moment notably after performing antibody staining and does not require washing the cells prior analysis."

"DRAQ5 is fine unless you want to study DNA replication, repair, transcription, etc in living cells. Why? Because, like other DNA intercalators, DRAQ5 perturbs the DNA macromolecule and will evict histones and a variety of DNA binding proteins."

"Excellent and reliable staining of the nuclei! The only drawback is that sometimes it stains more than just the nuclei. It helped with the cell counting program."

"Super easy to use, just add it to your secondary antibody solution in immunofluorescence studies (cells and tissues), and you get reproducible stainings of your nuclei with excitation/emission wavelenghts that do not interfere with other common flurophores used in multiple immunofluorescence stainings."

"The product is reliable, efficient and easy to use. It's results were very good."

"This product was effective for my experiments. I successefully stain my bacteria for my live/dead assays. I obtained good results and I consider that this product is easy to use."

"The product is very easy to use, not too expensive. it does not need specific after sale care. The product allows for reproducible results."

"The Draq5 dye worked excellently in our assay. We used it for an image based assay for screening our drug candudates."

"This product has been used in flow cytometry assays. This product is characterized by easy operation. It suffices to follow the manufacturer's guidelines. The results are reproducible. The product stands out further on account of its functionality and quality/price ratio."

"Very easy to use and works well. Gives reliable and reproducible results."

"This product allowed us to effectively differentiate live and dead cells and debris when used in concert with propidium iodide for flow cytometric analysis. DRAQ5 can be diluted directly in FACSFlow when resuspending cells and offers a short incubation time. We were able to use this DRAQ5 when analyzing viability in several cell treatment groups and the results obtained matched the expected results."

"DRAQ5 is a versatile and easy to use DNA stain. We use it for high/medium throughput gene perturbation screens in mammalian cells."

"The product was easy to use and the results were reproducible. I would recommend the product."

"It's a very good product! I use it for fluorescence and confocal microscopy and i really like it"

"The DRAQ5 is essential for our In-Cell ELISA assays to measure the cell numbers and viability. It is super easy to use and lasts extremely long. It consistently delivers great results and we have never run into any problems with this reagent."

"It's an easy-to-use product of high quality. The results are good and reproducible."

"This product is very easy to use and gives excellent staining, highly reproducible among distinct experiments. The results are comparable to the commonly used DAPI. Very good results also after antigen retrieval protocols. Absolutely worth trying."

"The product itself is easy to use but the results are not reproducible every time. Would love if the product quality is improved because overall it is a good reagent to have!"

"The product is very easy to use and I followed the manufacturer's instructions. It works very well and does staind the nuclei. Unfortunately 6 months after opening the quality got lower since precipitates were shown in my images. I kept it at 4° as requested. It would be useful to be able to buy smaller aliquots for labs only using it to stained fixed cells."

"Very useful as nuclear marker in well-preserved tissue sections and in cell cultures. Not suitable in tissue sections pre-treated with formic acid (as those assessed in human prion diseases to avoid "infectivity" of PrPSC)"

"We used DRAQ5 for labeling our bacteria of interest for live imaging the bug during its intracellular life inside host cells. The excitation and emission spectra are sufficiently different compared other fluorescent compunds allowing it to be used in conjunction with other fluorescent dyes. We are currently exploring the possibility of employing DRAQ5 in fixed cell fluorescence imaging."

"Draq5 is an easy to use and affordable live cell stain."

"I am really happy with the use of this product allowing the elimination of dead cells for flow cytometry analysis."

"The product is very easy to use and gives accurate values for cell normalisation when compared to other nuclei stains. The use of draq5 in a plate reader really speeds up data acquisition."

"We used this product to define nuclear localization of different proteins in cultured adult mouse cardiac myocytes. Draq5 was easy to use and provided a good fluorescent signal in the far-red spectrum that didn't interfere with our other fluorophores."

"Great results enabling us to reproducibly track Chlamydia trachomatis during its interaction with the host cell. Reliable and robust product."

"It's very easy to use, with different fluorophores."

"DRAQ5 stain nuclei in an easy way, I have no doubt that is one of the best, mainly in live cells, though for the specific case of my lab we rather used cell-fixed preparations, though for this case DRAQ5 works fine as well. I'd recommend DRAQ7 which is a bit better. Cons, both of them are expensive in caparison with other nuclei staining dyes."

"DRAQ5 from BioStatus is a very useful reagent for cytometry-related applications. For our study, it allowed us to discriminate between nucleated cells and anucleate cells. In addition, within the anucleate cells, it allowed us to discriminate between erythrocytes and reticulocytes. This reagent is very easy to use, extremely reliable and efficient as it quickly enters cells. It displays a very bright fluorescence with only a very small amount. Support from BioStatus is outstanding. It is also very easy to use and does not need to be washed."

"The product works very well and can be re-used. I used it as an alternative to DAPI and Hoechst, to stain cellular DNA within the nucleus, because the CLSM system we use does not have a 405 nm laser line. The main problem of this product is that it is very expensive when compared to other stains such as the ones mentioned above. Indeed for such application I would not recommend it. However, it is ideal for live cell imaging experiments since it is cell permeable and the 633 laser used for its excitation is much less phototoxic as compared to the 405 one."

"Reproducible staining and easy to use. I was very happy with the product"

"The stain is very effective and results in strong staining. We like it as it combines nicely with FITC and TRITC without bleed-through"

"DRAQ5 was easy to use and produced high quality sharp staining for our analysis."

"We have used DRAQ5 for several years in our laboratory and we are really satisfied with this product. It is very easy to use it with very fast staining procedure. It is not toxic at all for our cell model and also in the case of double or triple immunostaining, this DRAQ5 doesn't have any cross reactivity effect with other immunostaining. There isn't any after sales care for this special product, but it doesn't need it. It works perfectly without any complication."

"This stain is very easy to use to stain for nucleated cells"

"Draq5 is easy to use and give good repetability for nucleus staining in tissue section and fixed or living cells. This product has been used to label bacteria with success and was the best solution to detect bacteria on high autofluorescent wood. The far red emission of Draq5 is very interesting to use on autofluorescent tissue and his storage at 4°C allow to avoid too much cycles of freezing and thawing source of product alterations."

"It was easy and effective to stain the nucleus. Staining protocol was simple to integrate into the work flow."

"Works great. Perfect for confocal. Would recommend."

"We are using DRAQ5 for many years to label the cell nuclei in in vitro cultured cells and also in tissue sections. We did not experience any problems. Staining is consistent and easy to detect using confocal microscopy."

"Draq5 is extremely easy to use and gives immense signal with absolutely no background. It's a very powerful and useful dye that can be used to study cell nuclei morphology and identifying cell types."

"After an initial titration for our specific tissue/cells, the DRAQ5 dye worked well and provided us with reproducible results. For our tissue (mouse embryo) we ended up using DRAQ5 at a 1:2000 dilution (1:500 proved to be too concentrated)."

"In PFA fixed cells DRAQ5 doesn’t gives always the same intensity; it works better in live cells. The staining in live cells is very fast and the nucleus appears very clear and bright."

"We use DRAQ5 to stain tissue culture cells for microscopy studies. The stain is easy to use and gives a great signal. The results are reproducible."

"The product DRAQ5 is easy to use and gives excellent results in confocal microscopy. The protocols for multiple labelling are straightforward and can be applied to a variety of tissues/cells fixed in different way. In the lab, we used it on both tissues (normal or tumors) and cell cultures (cell lines and primary culture), always with success. A plus is the fact that the staining does not interfere with other staining, nor does it bleach other fluorophores."

"DRAQ5 is very user friendly. We used it at 2.5 microM concentration to visualize nuclear/mitotic DNA of U2OS cells. Incubation of DRAQ5 was done during the penultimate wash in our immunostaining protocol (incubation ~ 5min). Following a final wash in PBS, the slides were mounted and images acquired on an LSM510 confocal microscope."

"very easy to use. very good reproducibility in different experiments. very cheap product."

"The nucleus staining is very easy to use. It was stained 1:1000 in PBS Buffer and analysed by Amnis image stream"

"Extremely easy to use. Highly reproducible results. Easy to quantify."

"Ideal for single-staining high content assays, DRAQ5 enables clear visualization of cell nucleus and gives a smoother background signal at cell cytoplasm - which is enough for image processing softwares to delimitate and segment cellular structures properly. Moreover, the stain stability enables material storage for longer period than other conventional dyes (we have imaged 384-well plates after 4 weeks post-staining and the fluorescence signal was sufficiently high); also there is no need for dye washout after staining the microplates (less pipetting stesp). We recommend DRAQ5 in single-staning high content screening for assessing compound activity against intracellular trypanosomatids (Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp.) - the dye marks both DNA material from intracellular parasites and host cells - and providing a faint signal in the cytoplasm - turning it easy to segment and quantify the intracellular parasites."

"This dye helps us to check synapsis between mast cells and pancreatic cancer cells. These findings provide evidence for a novel mode of unidirectional crosstalk between MCs and cancer cells implicating direct activation by cancer cells in MC reprogramming into a pro tumorigenic profile"

"DRAQ5 is a simple, easy-to-use product. Either used on live-primary or fixed cells a simple 5-10 minute incubation followed by washing steps produced consistent, repetitive results. Its fluorescent excitation/emission spectra are very well suited to combine with other fluorophores without channel bleeding or crosstalk. The particular spectral characteristics of DRAQ5 make it also easy to work with in fluorospectrometry-based experiments. We have also used DRAQ5 combined with metabolic biomarkers in solution without observing interference with cellular metabolic uptake in short-time uptake experiments, this allowed us not only to reduce experimental time, but also helped us reduce cell manipulation."

"For Draq5, it was easy to employ and visualize. As a fluorescent dye, the product was highly specific for DNA and there was no smearing problem"

"The Draq 5 product is of excellent quality and is reliable and reproducible under experimental conditions. In addition it is very easy to use. We have used the product for the majority of our imaging flow cytometry applications and have published extensively on this DNA repair/DNA damage and human genotoxicity. We will continue to use the Draq 5 formulation for our work although the price is rather too high"

"Excellent product with reproducible data. I would recommend to use other researcher"

"Product was easy to store/handle. Purchase of product was easy. Preparation of the product took more time than expected but was due to the experimental protocol and not the product itself. We would purchase this product again for further research if needed."

"It works very well and specifically. It is easy to use."

"I used DRAQ5 for internal normalisation of in-cell western (ICW) experiments to detect cytosine modifications in human cardiac mesenchymal cells. It arrived few days after my order. It is really easy and fast to use: it can be added at the end of the standard ICW procedure before plate reading. Really accurate and reproducible."