In biological sciences, we can say that “seeing is understanding”. Being able to directly observe the effects of a drug, therapeutic active substance, toxic material or external agent in cellular systems or tissues gives us very valuable information in diagnosis, therapy and prognosis studies. Moreover, distinguishing the effects of therapy at the level of individual cells within a cell population allows the discovery of unaffected rare subpopulations.
To benefit from the studies carried out in this context, our center has imaging systems based on different technologies with sensitivities ranging from millimetric scale to nanometric scale. Thus, high resolution images can be obtained at many levels, from dissection studies to be carried out with fluorescently-modified model organisms (fluorescence stereomicroscope), to live or fixed tissue sections or cell preparations (fluorescence microscope with live cell imaging equipment) and to detailed examination of intracellular organelles (FE-SEM ve AFM).
The contribution of single-cell analyses to the current knowledgebase in scientific world is scarce. In our research center, in addition to the high-content imaging system, cellular phenotyping studies are also carried out by the help of a flow cytometry instrument with cell sorting system, which allows the cell sub-populations to be sorted and cultured. Thus, drug screening studies, drug or active substance interaction analyzes in 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional and organoid systems can be performed at the single cell level.
Within the scope of phenotyping studies, Cell Metabolism Analyzer is used to determine the “energy usage phenotypes” of cells. Real-Time Cell Analysis system is used to obtain real-time growth curves of cells by the help of its integrated biosensor.