MDS Analytical Technologies Releases MetaXpressPowerCore™ and MetaXpress® 3.0 Cellular Imaging Software

MDS Analytical Technologies, a leader in innovative solutions for drug discovery and life sciences research, today announced at the Society for Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) Conference and Exhibition 2009 in Lille, France, the availability of the MetaXpressPowerCore™ and MetaXpress® 3.0 image acquisition and analysis software. These advancements are designed to accelerate the throughput of High-Content Screening (HCS) and expand toxicity applications to include micronuclei detection.

MetaXpressPowerCore™ software improves workflow and significantly reduces overall time required for HCS screens by dramatically increasing image analysis speeds. Image analysis is improved by leveraging a novel parallel-processing infrastructure that can be scaled to the user’s throughput need. MetaXpressPowerCore™ software integrates with the existing MetaXpress® platform and MDCStore™ data-management solution, and is licensed by the number of processes required. MetaXpressPowerCore™ is compatible with the entire suite of MetaXpress® application modules.

MetaXpress® 3.0 software introduces a number of ease-of-use improvements, including new data- management utilities, such as database optimization, data archival and deletion. MetaXpress® 3.0 analysis is compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, and runs all of the most recent features of MetaMorph® 7.6 software.

“Cellular imaging technology has become integral to drug discovery, research and screening, and improvements in flexibility and speed are critical for customers,” said Andy Boorn, President of MDS Analytical Technologies. “The next milestone for HCS is scaling up to primary screening with imaging technology. Elimination of image analysis bottlenecks with these new products is a major accomplishment toward realizing this goal.”

Another enhancement to MetaXpress® 3.0 software is the release of the Micronuclei Application Module that allows users to find, evaluate and quantitate micronuclei in nucleated cells for HCS. This product uses a proprietary algorithm that is a significant improvement over existing competitive micronuclei detection methods. Using additional probes, this new application module makes it possible for users to additionally differentiate between mitotic, apoptotic, and necrotic cells, expanding the toxicology measurement suite significantly.