By Brian (Ruibo) Wu
Holotomography (HT) is a laser technique similar to a CT scan that is used to image a microscopic sample. The technology was developed in the 2000s and it has been applied to the field of biology and medicine. Due to its enormous potential benefits, several private HT companies were founded such as Nanolive in 2012.
Last year, Nanolive’s new product, CX-A, extended the exploration of living cells from single cells to cell populations without compromising on the highest precision and resolution ever. It provides a new tool for scientists to investigate macro cellular dynamics like cell health, proliferation, movement, and cell function.
These amazing features are the result of CX-A’s unprecedented structure. As introduced by Nanolive, CX-A is designed to work with 96 well plates to multiply and parallelize experimental conditions. Hence, it undoubtedly brings significance to each experiment and delivers solid biological insights to researchers. Furthermore, the system is equipped with multiple imaging modalities to correlate and compare physical and chemical information at each time-point. Finally, 3D data sets of every single image at every single time-point are automatically acquired in real-time. A fully integrated solution adapted to the most advanced professional needs.
The CX-A can image living cells for a virtually limitless amount of time. Thanks to its unique harmless way of cell preparation and observation, hundreds of images can be collected each hour, transforming endpoint assays to continuous analysis, while cells remain unperturbed in a physiologically controlled environment.
Most surprisingly, CX-A completely redesigned intuitive user-interface enables first-time users to set-up experiments in just a few minutes and walk away, while the CX-A automatically collects the images. A real-time preview allows the user to navigate through the data at any time while offering an overview of the experimental protocol. Moreover, the 3D dataset output can then be exported with just a few clicks to multiple data formats for analysis.
Nowadays, since CX-A is portable and budget-friendly, it has been widely used in laboratories throughout the world. Benefited from CX-A’s efficient features, several ground-breaking discoveries in the cell biology field have been achieved in the past two years.
Reference:
https://www.the-scientist.com/features/2019-top-10-innovations-66738
