Celluminate is extremely versatile. I use it routinely to label any type of cells without loss of viability or activation of cellular stress/differentiation pathways. I have successfully labelled many different (and challenging) cell types such as, neutrophiles, Stem cells, neurons, tumoral cells, primary dermal/epidermal cells. It is a perfect tool for bioimaging.
Because it takes advantage of the cellular endocytic pathway and it escapes the endosomal route, it diffuses very nicely inside the cell and somehow, this results in a fantastic resolution for imaging cellular processes and filopodia.
I have always had problems with other dyes for live cell imaging, they tend to accumulate in granular/patchy areas which makes complicated to visualise the cellular borders (especially at high magnification in confocal microscopy). This is not the case with Celluminate. Also, the levels of uptake are so high that I never get the background noise.
This is especially important for my 3D tissue engineered construct bioimaging or solid tumour mass imaging. The diffusion through is fantastic and you do not get the typical background noise of the cfse dyes.
You can track the cells all the way through different tissue layers. It is great for cancer invasion analysis. The cells keep the same signal for a long period of time in culture so it is ideal for time lapsbioe microscopy.
The fact that Celluminate™ does not depend on intracellular enzymatic reactions to be fluorescent is very important, this gives a uniform labelling of the cellular population (no matter how long the cells have been stained for) which is great when you are trying to do FACS analysis.
Last but not least, it is so easy to use that you can combine it with any experimental methodology: you can use it in cell suspension or in adherent monolayers, at any type of cell density, in medium or PBS, with or without serum, in 2D or 3D, long or short period of incubation, multiple additions.. no titrations, no previous dilution steps, no cell harming/permeating substances; just direct from the package, into the cells and ready to image.
