Vitra introduces nuclear translocation kit
application, a new method enabling the measurement of
cytoplasm-to-nucleus translocation, a critical indicator of
cellular response to various drug treatments.
The application tracks the movement of certain proteins from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. These proteins, which undergo the process of translocation, are well-recognized targets for the development of anti-inflammatory drugs. These potential inhibitors are considered to have important therapeutic benefits for the treatment of a variety of cancers.
The part nuclear translocation plays in the drug discovery arena means it is applicable in Cancer, inflammation, and diabetes therapeutic areas.
A spokeswoman for Vitra Bioscience told DrugResearcher.com: "Nuclear translocation is one of the most popular applications for our customers in drug discovery because it can be used for a variety of therapeutic areas. Our nuclear translocation application allows researchers to directly quantify cell responses to drugs without having to adopt subcellular segmentation necessary for conventional analysis."
"Our objective is to reduce failure rates for our pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry customers as they look to develop new pharmaceutical compounds, which is a huge problem in the industry right now."
The application is designed to work with Vitra's CellCard System which enables improved identification, analysis and optimisation of promising pharmaceutical leads against multiple cell types or targets simultaneously in a single well, in contrast to the standard serial approaches of compound profiling.
"This analysis can be achieved without subcellular segmentation, a time consuming approach to conducting conventional nuclear translocation assays."
Cell-based assays are currently used across nearly all stages of the drug discovery process but specifically in lead discovery, selection, and optimization. There is expected to be a continued demand for higher quality data that is generated efficiently. This will create market opportunities for many companies, including ours. The market for cell-based technologies (that provide multidimensional outputs) is still considered to be in the early adopter phase.
The spokeswoman added that such is the market Vitra were looking to provide more highly relevant information, looking into the use of primary cells in order to evaluate compounds with improved selectivity.
Cell signal transduction pathways frequently activate the transcription of specific genes that co-ordinate programmed responses such as the initiation of cell division, exocytosis, differentiation, and apoptosis.
Activation of certain transcription factors leads to the translocation of molecules from the cytoplasm of a cell to its nucleus. Once in the nucleus, these molecules bind to regulatory sequences in nuclear DNA.
The relative ease and accuracy of results in which this process achieves has led to a string of companies that are providing nuclear translocation kits.
Beckman Coulter's Cell Lab IC 100 Image Cytometer system tracks the movement of fluorescently labelled proteins between the cytoplasm and nucleus of the cell measuring the distribution of fluorescence in defined sub-cellular compartments.
For accurate reading, the IC 100 automatically images populations of cells, defines nucleus and cytoplasm, measures the amount of fluorescent signal in each, and then quantifies the proportion of labelled protein in each cell compartment as a measure of cellular response.
The nuclear translocation application is available now for use with Vitra's CellCard System.
