ChromoTek’s fluorescent two hybrid (F2H®) technology enables screening and validation of compounds in living cells
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Push For Smart Industry: ChromoTek wins category "Biotechnology" and the overall first prize from 1200 participating companies.
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Visit us at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, booth 1038!
moreChromoTek's Chromobody® Technology for High Content drug profiling licensed to Bayer
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Chromobodies®: novel fluorescent nanoprobes/ biomarkers
The challenge
The understanding of cellular processes in response to external stimuli is one of the major challenges in early drug discovery, compound screening and validation. It requires reliable information on abundance, localization, post-translational modifications and dynamic interactions of the cellular components involved.
Antibodies are key reagents for visualizing cellular components but their use is restricted to fixed cells. This is why antibodies only show snapshots of their targets and cannot provide information on the mobility and dynamics of their respective antigen within a living cell. Furthermore, the use of antibodies is often plagued by batch-to-batch variations, lack of accessibility of some targets, high background signals and the like.
The solution - Chromobodies®
ChromoTek's Chromobodies® are a novel species of intracellular functional antibodies. Chromobodies® are made by genetically fusing the antigen binding domain (VHH) derived from heavy chain antibodies of camelids to fluorescent proteins, e.g. TagGFP2 or TagRFP.[1]
With ChromoTek's unique Chromobody®-Technology the discrepancy and limitations of antibodies and fluorescent protein tagged reporters can now be overcome. You are now able to study the endogenous proteins of your target of interest in living cells - instead of artificial fluorescent fusion proteins which may behave differently from the real protein or may even be toxic to the cells. In combination with High-Throughput Microscopy and automated image analysis Chromobodies® set up a new class of intracellular biomarkers for High-Content Analysis (HCA). Our proof-of-principle studies include:
- cell cycle monitoring
- real time apoptosis studies
- detection of posttranslational modification
These reagents thus significantly expand both the quality and the quantity of information that can be gathered in HCA.
Chromobodies are available as stable cell lines (U2OS or HeLa) with different fluorescent tags (TagGFP2 of TagRFP).
Also available as Assay Ready Frozen Cells available from CCS - Cell Culture Service
In order to use Chromobodies in your cell line of choice, you can now also obtain the Chromobody® plasmids.