CyTOF® mass cytometry is an emerging and exciting application for research

CyTOF® mass cytometry utilizes rare metals tagged to antibodies, allowing researchers to examine over 30 different proteins on and within a single cell without concern of overlapping emission spectra. This single cell proteomics platform enables simultaneous deep phenotyping with functional profiling and has already been used in a diverse range of research areas, including immunology, oncology and hematopoietic stem cell research.

How does it work?

Cells suspensions are stained with a panel of varying metal-conjugated probes (typically antibodies) directed against specific targets of interest. The cells are then introduced into an Inductively Coupled Plasma where they are atomized and the cell-associated metals are ionized. The atomic ions for each single cell is extracted into the ion optics and time-of-flight regions of the mass cytometer where the ions are separated by mass. The masses corresponding to the metal-tagged probes are counted in discrete time-separated detector channels, allowing for quantitation of each target of interest per cell.

The mass cytometer allows for exceptionally high speed data acquisition, with four minutes of raw data collection being sufficient for analysis of 100,000 cells. The resulting data is written in .txt or .fcs file formats compatible with many analysis programs.

The CyTOF® mass cytometry platform truly unlocks the ability to comprehensively profile and phenotype complex samples.

Learn more at www.standardbio.com