Suspension cells are avoided in the immunofluorescence platform, but don’t need to be, thanks to the  Shi-fix™ cover-slips from Shikhar Biotech

Immunofluorescence (IF) is a beautiful technique. Life scientists often use it to detect specific protein expression. Its beauty lies as much in the visually stunning, colorful images as in its ability to display the localization of a particular protein within a cell. The scientific and aesthetic appeal of IF has led to increased use of IF data in publications.

Beautiful data do not come easily, as many research scientists will agree. IF is carried out on cells grown on or sticking to glass slides. These cells must stick strongly enough to withstand fixation, permeabilization and probing procedures. Add  many rounds of buffer and detergent washes in between., and you realize just how well the cells must be attached to the glass for IF to work. Which cells would be right for such a demanding job ? Enter adherent cells, with their natural propensity to adhere to appropriate surfaces, including coated glass slides. Suspension cells just don’t cut it, and the penchant for avoiding them in IF is all too evident in scientific publications.

Fair enough, but what if your protein of interest is expressed only in suspension cells ? Or you want to investigate its expression only in such cells ? How do you stick suspension cells on the cover-slip strongly enough for immunofluorescence? For starters, you could use special spin columns and centrifuging. This method applies a physical force on the cells to get them to stick on the glass cover-slips. Alternatively you could fix, permeabilize, probe and the wash the cells in suspension first. In the next step you would get them to stick on the glass slides/cover-slips  using adhesives or biological anchors. Both methods involve additional steps that may require optimizing, adding to the already elaborate protocol. Would it not be great if you could attach suspension  easily to glass slides, and even grow them on the slides, to make IF easier ? In other words, make them behave as if they were adherent ?

Now you can! The research and development team at Shikhar biotech has developed cover-slips on which suspension cells can be simply added onto. The cells will attach to the cover-slips, and happily grow on them as a monolayer.  you can subject these cells to immunofluorescence protocol as if they were adherent (which they are, sort of ;)). A technical need has now been met, and will hopefully lead to additional beautiful IF data from suspension cells.