Apoptosis assays

Apoptosis is a programed cell death used by the body to remove damaged or unwanted cells and occurs during cytotoxic T cell killing and with many cancer chemotherapies. As such, it provides an important mechanism of action for the killing of unwanted tumor cells. Apoptosis is characterized by events such as expression of phosphotidylserine on the cell surface, activation of caspase enzymes and the fragmentation of the genomic DNA, loss of membrane integrity and decrease in mitochondrial function. Aragen Bioscience has effectively reduced to practice a variety of such assay enabling molecules with differing mechanisms can efficiently be tested. These assays are typically run using FACS but can also be executed in a plate reader format.