Cellular Phenotyping and Quality Control

Advances in technology has transformed the landscape for exploring the involvement of cellular metabolism in health and disease. Cellular metabolic profiling is a branch of cellular bioenergetics that uses real-time extracellular flux (XF) analysis to assess a cells energetic demand, capacity and flexibility. In recent years, this direct and sensitive approach has proved to be important in characterising the metabolic phenotype of cells. This metabolic characterisation approach is key to develop a better understanding of the metabolic pathways involved with supplying the cell with enough energy to grow, proliferate and ultimately maintain homeostasis. Metabolic profiling is also useful to explore a cells metabolic plasticity and tolerance when exposed to certain stress responses.

Metabolic profiling is also useful for quality control purposes, for example when comparing the function of fresh versus cryopreserved cells. This is of particular importance with primary or blood based immune cells, as cryopreservation can dramatically alter the metabolism of cells which affects downstream functional and endpoint assays. Immune cells such as PBMCs or T-lymphocytes are particularly susceptible to cryogenic-induced defects in metabolism. This is highlighted when real-time metabolic profiling is used to profile immune cell stimulation in response to specific activators. From these measurements it is evident that cryopreservation can have adverse effects on the metabolic response of immune cell activation with consequences for downstream cytokine response assays.

XF analysis is improving our understanding of cell metabolism and helping researchers identify and expose metabolic phenotypes that associate with normal and disrupted metabolism in health and disease. As well as being sensitive indicators for cell function and disease model validation, real-time metabolic profiling also provides insight into processes and intermediates critical to cellular homeostasis and potential drug targets for the treatment of disease.

Combining years of technical know-how in XF analysis with cellular bioenergetics expertise, we offer fee-for-service assays to metabolically profile live cells, providing our clients with a complete picture of cellular processes as they happen.