Core--Bioluminescence

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The in-vivo biotuminescence imaging core facility will provide the Philadelphia NTROI Team of investigators with the capability to perform sensitive non-invasive molecular imaging for a variety of applications including detection and quantitation of constitutive biotuminescent reporter-expressing normal or cancer cells, imaging protein expression and protein-protein interaction through use of luciferase fusions, imaging gene expression through the use of gene-specific promoter-luciferase reporter constructs. The facility at present offers the capability to measure firefly luciferase, renilla luciferase, as well as GFP reporters expressed within the same cells or tissues, either in 96-well formats or in animals such as mice or rats. Funds have been requested for additional fluorescence filters. The facility also offers assistance with experimental design, troubleshooting, data management, analysis and display. The facility is committed to providing expert assistance with in-vivo bioluminescence imaging to the cancer research community and is committed to maintain, and upgrade the capabilities to in the future increase the number of reporters, develop novel imaging probes, and incorporate softwares that can perform 3-dimensional reconstructions. The facility will also be equipped to provide positive and negative controls for investigators. The proximity of the Xenogen Bioluminescence ln-vivo Imaging System to other imaging modalities such as flow cytometry and microscopy will further assist users with troubleshooting, validation and independent verification.