Apoptosis Imaging Probes

Apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism's lifecycle, and defective apoptotic processes have been implicated in a variety of diseases such as atrophy and cancers. In situ labeling of apoptotic cells allows highly sensitive and quantitative analysis of involved cells. Characteristics of the late stages of apoptosis are changes in nuclear morphology, including chromatin condensation, degradation of nuclear envelope, and DNA strand breaks. TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling) assays are the most widely used methods for rapid identification and quantification of the apoptotic cell fraction in cultured cell preparations. TUNEL reaction preferentially labels DNA strands that generated during apoptosis using the ability of TdT to label blunt ends of double-stranded DNA independent of a template. This selective labeling allows discrimination of apoptosis from necrosis and from primary DNA strand breaks induced by cytostatic drugs or irradiation.

BioActs developed Flamma^® Fluors TUNEL assay kit for quantitative analysis of apoptotic cells in the mixed cell populations. The kit employs dUTP conjugated Flamma^® Fluors and FITC dyes for labeling of fixed cells or tissues. Flamma^® Fluor dyes display excellent fluorescence activity and photostability after conjugated to biomolecules, allowing detection of low-abundance biological structures with great sensitivity. Flamma^® TUNEL assay kit is reliable and effective method to detect and quantify a wide levels of apoptotic cells by fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. In addition, the kit can be used in the analysis of apoptotic cell of paraffin-embedded tissue sections along with cultured cells. BioActs offers Flamma^® TUNEL assay kit for the detection apoptotic cells in frozen and formalin-fixed tissue sections, determination of the sensitivity of malignant cells to drug-induced apoptosis, discrimination of apoptotic and necrotic cells in the cell death environment, etc.

Components of Flamma^® Fluors TUNEL assay kit

Figure 2. Fluorescence imaging of apoptosis progress with Flamma® FITC TUNEL kit 

Figure 3. Fluorescence imaging of apoptosis progress with Flamma ® 552 TUNEL kit 

Figure 4. Fluorescence imaging of apoptosis progress with Flamma ® 648 TUNEL kit