CELL Based Assays

More than 20 years experience in cell biology and cell culture enables our staff at Marin Biologic to employ both the scientific approach and the "art" of cell culture to your projects. We can recommend strategies and provide contract services for cell-based assays, tissue culture, cell culture optimization, bioassays including stem cells and protein expression systems for large-scale tissue culture (including hollow fiber). Our laboratory is GLP and GMP compliant for projects destined for FDA submission, allowing your custom assay development to be brought through pre-clinical assay validation to clinical drug development.

Cell-based assay or bioassay development can range from cytotoxic assays including apoptosis to cell proliferation and metabolic assays. Cell-based assay development can also include high throughput screening assays and other custom bioassays used to characterize drug stability for GLP GMP lot release, drug potency and for drug purification and production support. Mechanisms of action, such as receptor binding, receptor activation, cell signaling, drug internalization and subcellular localization can be delineated in cell-based assays following treatment with your pharmaceuticals. Bioassay development can encompass testing of conditioned medium, cell lysates or whole cells in a variety of formats including ELISA and immunohistochemical methods. Our scientists can grow and differentiate stem cells as well as provide assay development to monitor stem cell differentiation using specific gene expression.

Custom cell culture can be performed for your cells, whether it is primary explants, cloning and optimizing expression of a cell line or developing the optimum medium, to include serum-free medium. Large scale cell cultures using bioreactors can be implemented for production of your specific protein. Additionally purification of your protein can be performed from either the cells themselves (eg. baculovirus) or from the conditioned media (see Biochemistry).

Using mammalian or insect cell cultures, our scientists can manufacture proteins on a 100 gram level. Our staff can provide cell pellets, conditioned media or membrane preparations. With our experience in classical protein purification (see Biochemistry) we can optimize your protein expression and production. Our scientists are very experienced in transfection and stable cell line generation.

The following partial list of methods is an example of our technologies that have been performed by our scientists.

Cell-Based Assay Development High Throughput Screening Assays (HTS) Stem Cell Differentiation Cell Proliferation Cell Death (Necrosis vs. Apoptosis) Cell Metabolism and Protein Turnover Molecular Labeling (Radioactive, Fluorescent, Colorimetric) Other Cell Biological Assays Analysis of Subcellular Fractions for Activity Flow Cytometry Phase and Fluorescence Microscopy Cell Receptor Binding, Activation and Turnover Cell Signaling and Downstream Events Immunocytochemistry Reporter Gene Assays   Drug Action On Cells Functional Assay including: Receptor Mediated Transport Enzyme Inhibition and Activation Translation, Transcription, Metabolism Cell Proliferation, Cytostatic or Cytotoxic Effects Stem Cell Expression Receptor Binding and Activation

Tissue Culture Cell lines Wild Type and Transfected Primary Cell Isolation and Culture Stem Cell Culture Adherent & Suspension Cell Cultures High Cell Density Tissue Culture Media Optimization, Serum-Free Adaptation Cell Culture Systems: Static, Roller Bottle, Membrane, Porous Bead, Hollow Fiber Bioreactor, Glass, Plastic Cell Cloning and Selection DNATransfection Protein Production in Scale-Up Bioreactors   Drug, DNA, RNA Delivery Drug Metabolism Receptor and Protein Mediated Transport Transient and Stable Transfection Electroporation Subcellular Localization Mechanisms of Internalization