Testing of in vitro cell migration and its analysis, including monolayer scratch test assays

Over the last few years, Dr. Falanga’s laboratory has acquired considerable knowledge of
the IncuCyte system by Essen BioScience. In fact, Dr. Xiaofeng Lin, Assistant Professor and  basic science Co-Director of his laboratory, was in charge of a core within an extensive multidisciplinary award. Thant NIH grant had Dr. Falanga has the PI, and with a focus on tissue repair and stem cells. The IncuCyte system allows investigators to go beyond the end-point readout of cellular events and to explore kinetic, functional, and quantitative measurement of living cells. This is facilitated by the use of the company’s imaging platform, which Dr. Falanga’s laboratory has acquired.
The technology is relatively new, having been made available to investigators since 2005.
Designed as the first microscope in a cell culture incubator, these live-cell imagers provide an automated tool for conducting time-lapse microscopy and quantitative image analysis. Because the microscope is located inside the incubator, the system is well suited to long-term monitoring of cell growth. Control of the system and access to the images and data are enabled from any computer on a local network. The software is provided without any license restrictions. The instrument can be installed on the local network  and the instrument can be accessed from any PC on the network. The system maintains a panel of assays for kinetic monitoring and quantitative analysis of cellular events, such as proliferation, migration, invasion, morphogenesis, apoptosis, cytotoxicity, tube formation and, if needed, reporter gene expression.