Millipore has developed the FlowCellect kits which helps to analyze the health of cells. Using a flow cytometry of Guava Technologies, now part of Millipore, the kits permit researchers to quickly and easily evaluate mitochondrial health in drug compound screening, apoptosis-related research, and understanding the mechanism of diseases.

“Mitochondrial health and cell health are intimately related, and flow cytometry is an ideal methodology to study this inter-relationship,” said Dr Kamala Tyagarajan, senior R&D manager, Millipore. ‘Mitochondria’ helps maintain cellular energy balance and control cell survival as a part of apoptosis regulation. Its dysfunction is often an early indicator of cellular stress and often triggers apoptosis or other cell death pathways, she added.

The six newly introduced FlowCellect kits from Millipore include the MitoDamage Kit, which provides simultaneous information on mitochondrial perturbations, apoptosis and cell death, and the MitoStress kit, which allows study of the inter-relationship between mitochondrial oxidative stress and apoptosis.

For researchers who want to further understand mechanistic pathways, Cytochrome C kits allow for evaluation of mitochondrial Cytochrome C levels in apoptotic cells and commitment to the intrinsic pathway of death, thereby simplifying an assay that has traditionally been done with western blots.

The kits may be utilized on any flow cytometer equipped with blue and red lasers. However, given the multiplicity of samples that need to be screened and the variety of treatment conditions that need to be evaluated in screening or apoptosis studies, Guava benchtop flow cytometers are a more effective solution for researchers working in this space.

“By combining FlowCellect Mitochondrial/Cell Health kits with the power of the easyCyte 8HT Flow Cytometry System and the heat-map and dose response features of Incyte software, researchers can obtain multiplexed answers on a large number of samples simultaneously. The simplicity of the assays will help migrate such studies out of the core lab to the lab bench and enable researchers from multiple disciplines to mine mitochondrial and cell health information with ease,” said Dr Tyagarajan.