What is the cytocypher?
The CytoCypher is a High-Throughput System (HTS) for the measurement of the contractility and calcium handling of enzymatically isolated cardiomyocytes. It is manufactured by CytoCypher, which is a subsidiary company of IonOptix Corp.
The sarcomere measurement technology utilized by the CC-HTS is based on conventional technology for the analysis of isolated cardiomyocytes which has been in used since the late 90s. These old IonOptix systems are usually found as attachments to conventional (and unconventional) microscopy systems.
what does the cytocypher do differently?
Ultimately the CC-HTS increases the productivity of experiments using isolated myocytes. The camera hardware of the CC-HTS is somewhat conventional but the imaging and software components are hugely enhanced. The microscope objective is attached to a freely moving mechanism which rasters in the x-, y- and z- axes and is controlled by software, rather than mechanically by the experimenter.
This provides a time saving as manual adjustment of the microscope using cog wheels can be time consuming. The CytoCypher also offers a fully automatic cell finding mode. Should cell culture conditions allow the system can acquire data itself using an automated cell finding algorithm which can also offer time savings, the removal of experimenter bias and potentially frees the researcher to get on with other things.
Finally, the analysis of data through the ‘Transient Analysis Tool’ is automated saving a significant amount of time compared to manual interrogation of the data.
NEW EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGMS?
Historically, the convention in pharmacological studies using cardiomyocytes has been to follow a single myocyte over the course of a treatment with a drug or multiple drugs. This allows one to be certain that the cell is behaving consistently for a given time period until the drug(s) are applied and that therefore the effects are purely attributable to the drugs alone.
This confidence comes at the expense of sampling power and productivity. Due to the greater sampling power of the CC-HTS (see section) many more cells can be acquired in a data set. A new approach can be proposed where multiple cells are studied after each treatment. It is suggested that having many measurements means that aberrant behavior contributes less to the data and is averaged out, increasing productivity and sampling power.
While time resolution is lower it is possible to design experiments (see section) where this is almost preserved although time resolution will always come at the expense of sampling power.