A New Tool for Oncology Research: Phasefocus Livecyte

The development of the Livecyte system, for live cell analysis, by Phasefocus is an exciting opportunity for Oncology research scientists to utilize an advanced technology to generate quantitative data without the need for cell labelling.

Livecyte employs a multi-modal, non-invasive approach to acquire information rich data. The consolidation of non-invasive acquisition, information rich images and bespoke analysis software into a complete system, enables a more refined representation of individual cell behavior, in an easy to use and intuitive application driven package.

The system is ptychography based, which allows for quantitative, label free imaging with minimum risk of inducing phototoxic damage to the cells. The non-invasive manner of the technique allows sensitive cells to be continuously imaged over an extended period, with no perturbation or unwanted contamination in the natural cell behavior.

The system produces high contrast information rich images, which enables robust automated segmentation and tracking of individual cells in a heterogeneous population. As such a suite of morphology phenotypic and dynamic phenotypic parameters can be extracted at every time point, for every cell within a diverse population.

Livecyte is also suitable for use on rare and expensive primary cells and/or patient derived cells, as a large amount of information can be extracted from a minimum number of cells.

Extending the analysis across a multi-well plate allows direct comparisons of drug dose, or a combination of drug dose, on a heterogeneous primary cell population and may lead to a more targeted and focused therapeutic solution to combat a specific cancer within a specific patient.

The various aspects of the Livecyte approach to cell analysis, ensures that the system is very well aligned with the field of Oncology, where the true cell behavior, accurate inter culture comparison and multi-parametric description of primary cell models is imperative.