Combination offers Possibilities in Workflow Improvement

Microscope and imaging systems manufacturer Leica Microsystems has formed a partnership with French start-up Alvéole with aims to make micropatterning with proteins more accessible to researchers for controlling the spatial organisation and biochemical microenvironment of cells.

A combination of Alvéole’s bioengineering platform with Leica microscopes offers potential for precision control over cell shape and growth on standard cell culture substrates and also special substrates used in electron tomography workflows, especially EM grids. This significantly improves the accessibility and throughput possible in cryo tomography workflow because the desired target cells are now growing at ideal locations for microscopy instead of in less accessible regions.

“We are very excited by how quickly many researchers have improved their cryo-electron tomography workflow and throughput thanks to our PRIMO micropatterning system. The partnership with Leica is a unique opportunity to accelerate these improvements and to provide the best possible tools for reproducible, efficient and simple cryo-ET cell sample preparation,” said Alvéole Marketing Manager, Marie-Charlotte Manus.

“For decades Leica Microsystems has been developing and delivering excellent tools and workflow solutions to enable research in cryo electron microscopy. In collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific we streamlined the Cryo Electron Tomography Workflow from plunge freezing up to data analysis. Still, the accessible placement of cells on the EM grid was a major obstacle. Now in cooperation with Alvéole we are solving this issue by the PRIMO micropatterning system. The system ensures, that cells grow in the middle of EM grid squares increasing the accessibility for TEM and SEM investigation massively,” added Dr Julia König, Product Manager at Leica Microsystems.

The first joint communications was in June with the launch of a webinar series presented by a common client (Professor Elizabeth Wright - Morgridge Institute for Research University of Wisconsin-Madison, US).

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