Merck Millipore launches LentiBrite lentiviral biosensors for cell analysis

Merck Millipore has announced the launch of new lentiviral biosensors for use in the real-time visualisation of proteins in live cells.

The life science company's new LentiBrite offering consists of a suite of pre-packaged lentiviral particles encoding proteins fluorescently tagged with green or red fluorescent protein.

They allow for the tagging of proteins responsible for cell structure, such as actin and tubulin, thus making it easy to detect for the presence of these compounds, as well as their subcellular location within live cells.

According to Merck Millipore, this technique provides higher efficiencies of transfection than traditional chemical-based and non-viral-based methods, while offering strong performance with dividing, non-dividing and difficult-to-transfect cells.

Dr Lucas Armstrong, research and development manager of new product development, said: "Researchers can watch the real time movement of proteins involved in critical functions that are often altered in disease states such as cancer or induced through modulation."

Earlier this month, the firm introduced its new UbiquitinProfiler Services, a drug profiling offering for use in the development of therapies targeting the ubiquitin pathway.