Nanolive have recently launched their Smart Lipid Drop Assay which has the potential to revolutionise medical research, by providing researchers access to an entire scale of lipid droplet (LD) dynamics that are unattainable using current techniques.

Recent developments in our understanding of LDs have shown that they are highly dynamic structures whose complex cycles of biogenesis and consumption play a key role in regulating metabolism, health, and disease. However, our understanding of LD dynamics, in particular their response to various stimuli or disease transition remains limited. Studying LDs is notoriously difficult as they are extremely sensitive to chemical labelling and phototoxicity.

Nanolive have solved this problem with the introduction of Smart Lipid Drop Assay (SLDA) using their label-free imaging which also eliminates phototoxicity which also means there is no need to compromise between spatial or temporal resolution. This results in high content, multiplexed images with unparalleled sub-cellular resolution.

SLDA is the world’s first label-free image analysis solution for segmenting and quantifying LD dynamics. Its complex algorithm allows you to accurately identify and quantify LDs, even when there are a large number closely clustered together. In fact, it delivers 39 metrics for a complete quantitative analysis of LD morphology, content, and distribution, at the single cell scale and at the population level and works on multiple cell types with high morphological variability.

The system has already been tested by numerous teams around the world. Dr. John Ferbas, Director, Department of Medical Sciences at Amgen described his experience with SLDA:

“Nanolive has developed a ‘one-click assay’ with no staining or centrifugation required, just a high-quality cell culture plus or minus the treatments of interest. This will allow us to learn orders of magnitude more about cell biology with less effort, less cost and greatly reduced infrastructure requirements relative to our legacy approaches.”

Dr. Branislav Radović, Senior Lecturer, Lipid Signalling Group, Medical University of Graz, Austria also commented:

With Nanolive, we get much more information with less material and in completely non-invasive conditions. The possibility to interfere with LD metabolism by changing the incubation conditions and quantify the data with the Smart Lipid Droplet Assay “on-time” is just great

“With Nanolive, we get much more information with less material and in completely non-invasive conditions. The possibility to interfere with LD metabolism by changing the incubation conditions and quantify the data with the Smart Lipid Droplet Assay “on-time” is just great.”

If your research involves looking at lipid droplet assays and you have been using traditional approaches, SLDA from Nanolive provides a non-invasive, time- and cost-effective solution for generating robust, reproducible results.

For more information download the Technical Note or contact AXT for more details.