Hampton, NJ – March 9th, 2021 – Visikol today announced its partnership with Bruker to use Bruker’s flagship MuVi SPIM CS Light-Sheet Microscopy platform to provide its clients with an even wider range of 3D tissue imaging services. The expanded services will now allow researchers to image larger tissues in 3D, such as entire mouse brains.
Since its inception in 2016, Visikol has assisted thousands of researchers in transitioning from two-dimensional to three-dimensional imaging through its contract research services and Visikol® HISTO™ reagents. Initially, the company began selling its Visikol HISTO reagents and kits primarily to academic researchers but quickly realized that there was also a large unmet need in the marketplace for advanced imaging services. The use of tissue clearing combined with advanced microscopy (e.g., confocal, light-sheet, 2-photon) and fluorescent labeling to image tissues in 3D requires a deep understanding of multiple complex fields, and even if researchers are successful in acquiring large image data sets, many times they struggle to transform these into useful insights. Over the last few years, Visikol has helped to fill this gap in the marketplace for 12 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and has built out a suite of advanced 3D image analysis tools.
“Prior to this partnership with Bruker, we relied heavily upon confocal microscopy for our 3D imaging services, which provides a high level of 3D resolution but is greatly limited in the amount of tissue volume that can be imaged,” said Visikol CSO Tom Villani, Ph.D. “The addition of light-sheet microscopy to our portfolio of imaging solutions means that we can now image much larger tissues and address novel questions that we could not evaluate before, such as mapping whole mouse brains in 3D or sampling tumors in 3D for heterogeneity.”
Light-sheet microscopy is an incredibly powerful tool for imaging 3D biological samples. Its inherent optical sectioning capabilities enable imaging of cleared and fluorescently labeled tissues with unprecedented optical resolution and volumetric imaging speed, yielding dramatically reduced photo-bleaching compared to confocal microscopy. Through this partnership with Bruker, Visikol will now employ the industry-leading MuVi SPIM CS, which is compatible with a variety of tissue clearing techniques (e.g., BABB, Scale, CUBIC, SeeDB, CLARITY, Visikol HISTO) and can be tuned over a broad range of refractive indices. Visikol is well-versed in every tissue-clearing approach and is able to use these various techniques to effectively image fluorescent proteins, immunofluorescent markers, and other chemical dyes in 3D.
“We are very excited by this partnership with Visikol and the ability to provide more researchers access to our technology through this unique service offering,” added Lars Hufnagel, Ph.D., GM of Bruker’s Light-Sheet Business. “The MuVi SPIM CS pushes the boundary of light-sheet imaging of cleared tissues in terms of optical resolution and imaging speed while maintaining easy system operation and convenient sample access and handling.”
Visikol has already begun to offer these light-sheet imaging services to its clients at highly competitive rates for both industry customers and academic researchers. With many researchers unable to access core facilities due to COVID19 restrictions, Visikol is discounting these services for its academic customers to help provide increased access to these capabilities. To leverage light-sheet imaging, researchers can either send Visikol fixed tissues for clearing or already fixed, labeled, and cleared samples for imaging.
About Bruker Corporation
Bruker is enabling scientists to make breakthrough discoveries and develop new applications that improve the quality of human life. Bruker’s high-performance scientific instruments and high-value analytical and diagnostic solutions enable scientists to explore life and materials at molecular, cellular, and microscopic levels. In close cooperation with our customers, Bruker is enabling innovation, improved productivity, and customer success in life science molecular research, in applied and pharma applications, in microscopy and nanoanalysis, and in industrial applications, as well as in cell biology, preclinical imaging, clinical phenomics and proteomics research and clinical microbiology. For more information, please visit www.bruker.com.
About Visikol
Visikol is a contract services company that is focused on accelerating drug discovery and development through the use of its imaging, digital pathology and advanced cell culture assay services. The company provides end-to-end preclinical services that include both 2D and 3D in vitro models and assays, 3D whole mount tissue imaging, multiplex imaging, high content imaging, digital pathology and custom drug discovery solutions. Visikol’s expertise is in transforming tissues and cells into large image-based data sets that can be mined for actionable insights such that pharmaceutical and biotech companies can make more quantitative and informed decision during the drug development process. Additionally, Visikol manufactures and sells a suite of tissue clearing reagents and 3D immuno-labeling kits. These products allow researchers to easily and rapidly image whole tissues and 3D cell culture models in 3D instead of traditional 2D sectioning. For more information about Visikol or its services, please visit www.visikol.com.