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Colony Forming Assay and colony counting
is universally recognized as the gold standard method for
measuring the effects of radiation, chemotherapeutic drugs
and other agents on cell viability. However, manually counting
the resulting cell colonies is a thankless and laborious task
in which consistent objectivity is difficult to achieve.
ColCount
and GelCount are easy-to-use, PC software-operated colony
counters that automate the detection, counting and
analysis of mammalian cell colonies in Petri dishes, flasks
and multi-well plates. Our colony counters provide a powerful
and cost-effective alternative to the subjective and labour-intensive
task of manual colony counting in laboratory techniques based
on the colony forming assay, also referred to variously as
the clonogenic assay, the cell survival assay or the tumor
cloning assay.
ColCount
and GelCount will be of interest primarily to cancer biologists
involved in drug discovery, radiobiology or toxicology research
although both systems may also be used to count/analyze bacterial
and yeast colonies on agar plates.
ColCount
was conceived to rapidly detect and count stained, adherent
mammalian cell colonies in classic '2-D' clonogenic assays,
supporting a variety of cultureware including flasks, Petri
dishes and 6-well plates.
GelCount
is also suited to counting stained, adherent colonies but
is additionally capable of counting and analyzing non-adherent
mammalian cell colonies in soft agar assays or other semi-solid
('3-D') media. GelCount is compatible with 6, 12, 24, 48 and
96-well plates as well as 35mm, 50mm and 100mm Petri dishes.
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