Amersham, Inc. sells a cell proliferation kit that utilizes a thymidine
analog (BrdU:
5-bromo-3-deoxyuridine). BrdU has several advantages over radioactive
techniques such as autoradiography--namely, it isn't radioactive.
Detection of labelled cells takes a relatively short time, too--only about
5 hours. Labelled cells are detected through some simple
immunohistochemisty. The Amersham kit provides the antibodies etc as
well. This kit is not cheap, however! You can buy BrdU through other
catalogs, and if you fish around, can probably come up with the necessary
antibodies and substrates. Results are good-I've used this quite a bit.
H.G. Gratzner et al. have written several articles about this technique,
which are useful.
Hope you find what you're looking for.
-Lisa McIntosh
