In article <9411040146.AA25636 at eliris.med.yale.edu>,
lolis at ELIRIS.MED.YALE.EDU (elias lolis) wrote:
> Does anyone have any strong opinions on what the most effective apparatus is
> for doing neutrophil chemotaxis assays? The Boyden-chamber seems to be
> heavily used but there appear to be other systems that do the job.
Specifically,
> does anyone know the relative advantages/disadvantages of using the 48-well
> microchamber from Neuroprobe or any of the products sold by Costar. I am
> a protein biochemist who will shortly set up to do these chemotaxis assays
> (I've never done them before) and any help or references would be appreciated.
>> Elias
Dear Elias,
The Costar transwells are small, relatively cheap, disposable items. It
is possible to culture cells on the filters and observe penetration
through the monolayer. They are simple to set up but use a lot of
solutions and require you to cut out each filter from the frame by hand,
which is quite a pain. I don't know if Costar has anything different
availiable.
The Neuroprobe system is expensive and fairly finicky to set up. They do
give good technical service, in my experience. Their systems will allow
you to do a lot more samples in a reasonable time. They now have a series
of 96-well apparatuses that are compatible with fluorescent or other plate
readers, which saves the problems of counting cells.
Basically, if you have more than a few assays to do and don't need to
culture cells on the filter, I would go with Neuroprobe.
(No connection with either company)
Yours,
Cliff Beall
Research Scientist
Neurobiotechnology
Ohio State University
Beall.3 at osu.edu
