Rising popularity of kinetic research over fixed cellular analysis is the key driver.

Addition of dyes and reagents alter the cell behavior, mostly in a negative manner, which does not showcase the natural course of action of the cellular functions.

Understanding the cellular behavior in its natural state is crucial in drug discovery and targeted drug therapy.

In a survey by Drug Discovery World Spring, almost 21% researchers prefer & use live cell imaging and 31% plan to use it in the future. Moreover, 38% of the respondents were interested in using live cell kinetic HCS imaging in the future. The most important feature for researchers is the ability to automate the incubation and image capturing of any live cell analyzer.

Equipment dominated the product segment in 2016. The current system, although of great potential are still expected to perform better over the next few years. The general trend is to make the instruments compact and integrated for end-to-end processing.

Cell biology dominated the application with more than 30% of the shares and was closely followed by developmental biology. Stem cell and drug discovery are the upcoming fields to apply live cell imaging in the research.

The global live cell imaging market is expected to reach USD 9.3 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.

Rising popularity of kinetic research over fixed cellular analysis is the key driver. Addition of dyes and reagents alter the cell behavior, mostly in a negative manner, which does not showcase the natural course of action of the cellular functions. Understanding the cellular behavior in its natural state is crucial in drug discovery and targeted drug therapy. This, in turn, increases the need for live cell imaging, thus boosting the market.

In a survey by Drug Discovery World Spring, almost 21% researchers prefer & use live cell imaging and 31% plan to use it in the future. Moreover, 38% of the respondents were interested in using live cell kinetic HCS imaging in the future. The most important feature for researchers is the ability to automate the incubation and image capturing of any live cell analyzer. Secondly, they also give importance to viable cell-tracking ability of the equipment. Further development in the technology of equipment is expected to fulfill these criteria and boost the utility of the same over the forecast period.

Development in delivering probes in living cells, targeting organelles, and proteins using some of the techniques has increased use and adoption of live cell imaging in research and other applications. With improved fluorescent probes, the techniques such as Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) share a majority of the share.

Further Key Findings From The Report Suggest: Equipment dominated the product segment in 2016. The current system, although of great potential are still expected to perform better over the next few years. The general trend is to make the instruments compact and integrated for end-to-end processing.

Cell biology dominated the application with more than 30% of the shares and was closely followed by developmental biology. Stem cell and drug discovery are the upcoming fields to apply live cell imaging in the research.

North America dominated due to its high investment rate and technologically sound infrastructure. The research firms present in this region are technologically aware, hence, readily invest in high cost equipment.

Asia Pacific is expected to show fastest growth over the forecast period due to increasing application of these imaging techniques in drug discovery and personalized medicine.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04899210/Live-Cell-Imaging-Market-Analysis-By-Product-Application-Technology-Time-lapse-Microscopy-Fluorescence-Recovery-After-Photobleaching-Fluorescence-Resonance-Energy-Transfer-High-Content-Screening-Segment-Forecasts.html

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Live Cell Imaging Market is expected to reach USD 9.3 billion by 2025 - PR Newswire (press release)

May 30, 2017 These cross-section images show three-dimensional human skin models made of living skin cells. Untreated model skin (left panel) shows a thinner dermis layer (black arrow) compared with model skin treated with the antioxidant methylene blue (right panel). A new study suggests that methylene blue could slow or reverse dermal thinning (a sign of aging) and a number of other symptoms of aging in human skin. Credit: Zheng-Mei Xiong/University of Maryland

New work from the University of Maryland suggests that a common, inexpensive and safe chemical could slow the aging of human skin. The researchers found evidence that the chemicalan antioxidant called methylene bluecould slow or reverse several well-known signs of aging when tested in cultured human skin cells and simulated skin tissue. The study was published online in the journal Scientific Reports on May 30, 2017.

"Our work suggests that methylene blue could be a powerful antioxidant for use in skin care products," said Kan Cao, senior author on the study and an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD. "The effects we are seeing are not temporary. Methylene blue appears to make fundamental, long-term changes to skin cells."

The researchers tested methylene blue for four weeks in skin cells from healthy middle-aged donors, as well as those diagnosed with progeriaa rare genetic disease that mimics the normal aging process at an accelerated rate. In addition to methylene blue, the researchers also tested three other known antioxidants: N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine (NAC), MitoQ and MitoTEMPO (mTEM).

In these experiments, methylene blue outperformed the other three antioxidants, improving several age-related symptoms in cells from both healthy donors and progeria patients. The skin cells (fibroblasts, the cells that produce the structural protein collagen) experienced a decrease in damaging molecules known as reactive oxygen species, a reduced rate of cell death and an increase in the rate of cell division throughout the four-week treatment.

Next, Cao and her colleagues tested methylene blue in fibroblasts from older donors (>80 years old) again for a period of four weeks. At the end of the treatment, the cells from older donors had experienced a range of improvements, including decreased expression of two genes commonly used as indicators of cellular aging: senescence-associated beta-galactosidase and p16.

"I was encouraged and excited to see skin fibroblasts, derived from individuals more than 80 years old, grow much better in methylene blue-containing medium with reduced cellular senescence markers," said Zheng-Mei Xiong, lead author of the study and an assistant research professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD. "Methylene blue demonstrates a great potential to delay skin aging for all ages."

The researchers then used simulated human skin (a system developed by Cao and Xiong) to perform several more experiments. This simulated skina three-dimensional model made of living skin cellsincludes all the major layers and structures of skin tissue, with the exception of hair follicles and sweat glands. The model skin could also be used in skin irritation tests required by the Food and Drug Administration for the approval of new cosmetic products, Cao said.

"This system allowed us to test a range of aging symptoms that we can't replicate in cultured cells alone," Cao said. "Most surprisingly, we saw that model skin treated with methylene blue retained more water and increased in thicknessboth of which are features typical of younger skin."

The researchers also used the model skin to test the safety of cosmetic creams with methylene blue added. The results suggest that methylene blue causes little to no irritation, even at high concentrations. Encouraged by these results, Cao, Xiong and their colleagues hope to develop safe and effective ways for consumers to benefit from the properties of methylene blue.

"We have already begun formulating cosmetics that contain methylene blue. Now we are looking to translate this into marketable products," Cao said. "We are also very excited to develop the three-dimensional skin model system. Perhaps down the road we can customize the system with bioprinting, such that we might be able to use a patient's own cells to provide a tailor-made testing platform specific to their needs."

The research paper, "Anti-Aging Potentials of Methylene Blue for Human Skin Longevity," Zheng-Mei Xiong, Mike O'Donovan, Linlin Sun, Ji Young Choi, Margaret Ren and Kan Cao, was published online in the journal Scientific Reports on May 30, 2017.

Explore further: Safe, inexpensive chemical found to reverse symptoms of progeria in human cells

More information: Zheng-Mei Xiong et al, Anti-Aging Potentials of Methylene Blue for Human Skin Longevity, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-02419-3

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Common antioxidant could slow symptoms of aging in human skin - Medical Xpress

The chemistry of cells is essentially the chemistry of carbon-containing compounds because the carbon atom has several unique properties that make it especially suitable as the backbone of biologically important molecules. To study cellular molecules really means to study carbon-containing compounds. Almost without exception, molecules of importance to the cell biologist have a backbone, or skeleton, of carbon atoms linked together covalently.

Actually, the study of carbon-containing compounds is the domain of organic chemistry. In its early days, organic chemistry was almost synonymous with biological chemistry because most of the carboncontaining compounds that chemists first investigated were obtained from biological sources (hence the word organic, acknowledging the organismal origins of the compounds).

The terms have long since gone their separate ways, however, because organic chemists have now synthesised an incredible variety of carbon-containing compounds that do not occur naturally (that is, not in the biological world). Organic chemistry therefore includes all classes of carbon-containing compounds, whereas biological chemistry (biochemistry for short) deals specifically with the chemistry of living systems and is, as we have already seen, one of the several historical strands that form an integral part of modern cell biology.

The carbon atom is the most important in biological molecules. The diversity and stability of carbon-containing compounds are due to specific properties of the carbon atom and especially to the nature of the interactions of carbon atoms with one another as well as with a limited number of other elements found in molecules of biological importance.

The single most fundamental property of the carbon atom is its valence of four, which means that the outermost electron orbital of the atom lacks four of the eight electrons needed to fill it completely. Since a complete outer orbital is required for the most stable chemical state of an atom, carbon atoms tend to associate with one another or with other electrondeficient atoms, allowing adjacent atoms to share a pair of electrons. For each such pair, one electron comes from each of the atoms. Atoms that share each others electrons in this way are said to be joined together by a covalent bond. Carbon atoms are most likely to form covalent bonds with one another and with atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur.

The electronic configurations of several of these atoms are such that in each case, one or more electrons are required to complete the outer orbital. The number of missing electrons corresponds in each case to the valence of the atom, which indicates, in turn, the number of covalent bonds the atom can form. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are the lightest elements that form covalent bonds by sharing electron pairs. This lightness, or low atomic weight, makes the resulting compounds especially stable, because the strength of a covalent bond is inversely proportional to the atomic weights of the elements involved in the bond.

Because four electrons are required to fill the outer orbital of carbon, stable organic compounds have four covalent bonds for every carbon atom. Methane, ethanol, and methylamine are simple examples of such compounds, containing only single bonds between atoms. Sometimes, two or even three pairs of electrons can be shared by two atoms, giving rise to double bonds or triple bonds. Ethylene and carbon dioxide are examples of doublebonded compounds. Triple bonds are found in molecular nitrogen and hydrogen cyanide. Thus, both its valence and its low atomic weight confer on carbon unique properties that account for the diversity and stability of carbon-containing compounds and give it a preeminent role in biological molecules.

The writer is associate professor, head, department of botany, ananda mohan college, kolkata, and also fellow, botanical society of bengal, and can be contacted at tapanmaitra59@yahoo.co.in

Excerpt from:
The importance of carbon - The Statesman

Physicist Stephen Hawking is perhaps the most famous sufferer of motor neuron disease, a crippling degenerative condition that affects an estimated 150,00 people around the world.

Karwai Tang / Getty

In news that may bring hope to Stephen Hawking and hundreds of thousands of others around the world, British scientists have used reprogrammed skin cells to study the development of motor neuron disease.

Its like changing the postcode of a house without actually moving it, explains neuroscientist Rickie Patani, referring to research offering startling new insights into the progress and treatment of the crippling degenerative condition, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Patani, together with colleague Sonia Gandhi, both from the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, in the UK, led a team of researchers investigating how the disease destroys the nerve cells that govern muscle movement.

The results, published in the journal Cell Reports, comprise the most fine-grained work to date on how ALS operates on a molecular level and suggest powerful new treatment methods based on stem cells.

Indeed, so exciting are the implications of the research that Ghandi and Patani are already working with pharmaceutical companies to develop their discoveries.

The neurologists uncovered two key interlinked interactions in the development of motor neuron disease, the first concerning a particular protein, and the second concerning an auxiliary nerve cell type called astrocytes.

To make their findings, the team developed stem cells from the skin of healthy volunteers and a cohort carrying a genetic mutation that leads to ALS. The stem cells were then guided into becoming motor neurons and astrocytes.

We manipulated the cells using insights from developmental biology, so that they closely resembled a specific part of the spinal cord from which motor neurons arise, says Patani.

We were able to create pure, high-quality samples of motor neurons and astrocytes which accurately represent the cells affected in patients with ALS."

The scientists then closely monitored the two sets of cells healthy and mutated to see how their functioning differed over time.

The first thing they noted was that a particular protein TDP-43 behaved differently. In the patient-derived samples TDP-43 leaked out of the cell nucleus, catalysing a damaging chain of events inside the cell and causing it to die.

The observation provided a powerful insight into the molecular mechanics of motor neuron disease.

Knowing when things go wrong inside a cell, and in what sequence, is a useful approach to define the critical molecular event in disease, says Ghandi.

One therapeutic approach to stop sick motor neurons from dying could be to prevent proteins like TDP-43 from leaving the nucleus, or try to move them back.

The second critical insight was derived from the behaviour of astrocytes, which turned out to function as a kind of nursemaid, supporting motor neuron cells when they began to lose function because of protein leakage.

During the progression of motor neuron disease, however, the astrocytes like nurses during an Ebola outbreak eventually fell ill themselves and died, hastening the death of the neurons.

To test this, the team did a type of mix and match exercise, concocting various combinations of neurons and astrocytes from healthy and diseased tissue.

They discovered that healthy astrocytes could prolong the functional life of ALS-affected motor neurons, but damaged astrocytes struggled to keep even healthy motor neurons functioning.

The research reveals both TDP-43 and astrocytes as key therapeutic targets, raising the possibility that the progress of ALS might be significantly slowed, or perhaps even halted.

Our work, along with other studies of ageing and neurodegeneration, would suggest that the cross-talk between neurons and their supporting cells is crucial in the development and progression of ALS, says Patani.

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Patients' stem cells point to potential treatments for motor neuron disease - Cosmos