Cell-based Assays

Rapidly translate your promising lead into a clinically ready candidate

Our wide range of screening platforms and complementary disease-relevant cell-based assays ensure we rapidly validate targets and identify hits. We then confirm a candidate therapeutic’s efficacy, mechanism of action and safety profile.

Our experienced team of cell biologists craft bespoke cell-based assays utilizing physiologically relevant cell types to answer specific questions about your candidate to support your decision-making process
Seamlessly integrate our cell-based assays into your drug discovery and development pipeline, enabling the rapid translation of your candidate into the clinic
Our cell-based assays serve as a potent tool in the drug discovery process, offering target-agnostic and therapeutic modality-agnostic application

The role of cell-based assays

‍Cell-based assays are pivotal across every phase of drug discovery and development, profoundly influencing the pace of therapeutic advancements to market. When the most appropriate cell models and experimental design are wisely selected, cell-based assays can provide the ideal combination of speed, efficiency, and physiological relevance to unlock critical insights on therapeutic candidates.

Several critical considerations are essential to ensure that cell-based assays provide the answers needed to strengthen your drug discovery program:

Strategic assay development: Understanding the specific context and intended data use is key in crafting biologically relevant assays for high-quality data generation
Assay customization: Pinpointing representative cell types and identifying suitable readouts aligned with therapeutic mechanisms of action (MOA) are core aspects of assay development
Expertise in action: Our cell-based team holds extensive experience in conducting complex assays tailored to diverse therapeutic targets and modalities
Tailored precision: We customize assays to meet our clients' unique requirements, ensuring a seamless alignment with their research objectives
In-depth analysis: Our approach allows for comprehensive examination of cellular behavior, unravelling disease mechanisms, and precise efficacy measurements

Discover the array of capabilities we offer in designing, conducting, and interpreting cell-based assays:

‍Explore our cell models

‍We offer decades of combined experience in crafting customized cell-based assays with even the most delicate and challenging cell types, we provide expert advice to help you select the most appropriate cell model for your application, whether it is immortalized cells, primary cells or iPSC-derived cells.

Cell lines

‍Immortalized cell lines serve as versatile, robust and efficient models for a wide range of applications throughout the drug discovery process. Cell line-based assays offer consistency and reproducibility, ensuring reliability in experimental outcomes. These features, combined with their scalability and cost effectiveness, make them the ideal choice for high-throughput screening, accelerating research by reducing costs and variability. We have extensive experience of culturing a broad variety of cell lines, and can offer:

Instant access to a diverse inventory of cell lines representing various cancers and tissues (e.g., skin, lung, liver, pancreas, brain)
The ability to source boutique cell lines from commercial vendors based on project requirements

We provide expertise in tissue culture and assay design:

Skilled tissue culture and cell biologist experts to design, conduct, and interpret assays using selected methodologies and instrumentation
Proficient handling of multiple cell lines concurrently, ideal for substantial projects when your team's capacity is limited

Example study we conducted using cell lines:

Investigating Tumor Cell Killing Through 2D and 3D Assays

Primary Cells

‍Primary cell cultures, derived directly from organ tissue, closely mimic the phenotype of in vivo cells, offering physiologically relevant data. These cultures serve as a superior model for preclinical and investigative research, capturing intercellular and intracellular communication intricacies.

Unlike immortalized cell lines, which are prone to mutations and chromosomal abnormalities, primary cells provide an improved representation of tissue cell types.

We have extensive scientific experience and technical expertise in working with primary human and rodent cells, with a specialized focus on immune and central nervous system cells:

Comprehensive protocols: Benefit from our developed and robust protocols, covering isolation, culture, differentiation, and activation of primary human and rodent cells
Versatile applications: Our models include both simple monoculture and complex co-culture assay systems, effectively recapitulating key pathophysiological mechanisms. These models find diverse applications across various therapeutic areas, including immunology, immuno-oncology, auto-immunity, inflammation, and neurodegenerative diseases
Advanced models: Cultivated with suitable primary cell culture media and supplements, our models represent advanced and accurate reflections of normal cell phenotypes and early disease progression

Example study we conducted using primary cells:

View our poster on modelling OPC maturation and myelination

Explore our collection of cell-based assays by application:

iPSC-derived cells

‍Most therapeutic candidates fail in clinical trials, either due to a lack of efficacy or to unacceptable levels of toxicity. This is partly caused by the historical reliance on pre-clinical models that do not accurately reflect human physiology. This realization boosted the popularity of novel human cell models, such as iPSC-derived cell cultures, for drug discovery and toxicity screening.

By harnessing iPSC technology, we generate translational human pre-clinical data from a variety of cell types, while avoiding the hurdles associated with sourcing primary human cells. If you are looking to reduce your reliance on in vivo models for your safety and efficacy testing, human iPSC-derived cells can be the right solution.

What we offer:

Custom assay development: We can source and culture a variety of human iPSC-derived cell types, and combine them to build representative, human-relevant in vitro systems tailored to your needs
Human disease modelling: We can test your candidate therapeutics in human iPSC-derived cells carrying disease-associated mutations and isogenic controls
Cross-species validation: We can conduct parallel testing of your candidate drugs in rodent primary and human iPSC-derived cells, providing translational continuity to your comprehensive data package to de-risk your transition to the clinic
Cutting-edge technologies: We offer a variety of readouts tailored to address your research question

Examples of studies we have conducted using primary cells: