News
Turning Cells into Reagents
Understanding frozen cells as a consumable reagent will significantly change your cell-based assays. Difficult-to-control cell culture variabilities that impact the assay performance are excluded from the process and lead to an improved assay precision. instaCELLs are available just as you need them. You can work with the same lot of cells today and for years to come, and share the same qualified cells with affiliate labs.
assay ready instaCELLs
In the early 2000s acCELLerate’s founders and scientists pioneered the assay ready approach and were the first in Europe offering custom frozen ready-to-use cells.
Today the use of qualified cell reagents is broadly accepted for multiple applications:
- High-throughput-screening (HTS) and safety pharmacology in drug discovery
- New Approach Methodologies (NAM’s) for safety assessment of chemicals and medical devices.
- GMP bioassays for the development and quality control of biologics and ATMPs.
Major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, CROs and CDMOs, ingredient manufacturers and safety testing laboratories rely on acCELLerate‘s more than 20 years of experience working with over 1,500 different cell lines.
functional cryopreservation
The idea of using frozen cells in an assay without prior cultivation raised the quality bar of cryopreservation.
To be truly assay-ready, cells should enter proliferation without a significant lag-phase and perform in a cell-based assay equally to continuously passaged cells.
Proper cell handling, optimized freezing media, and a controlled freezing process are hallmarks of a functional cryopreservation.
make your cell bank fit your assay
acCELLerate will support you to find the right cell banking strategy tailored for your individual project. This could be a high-throughput screening campaign where you need a large amount of cells in a short time, routine safety testing where you occasionally run the same set of assays, or a GMP-bioassay for the potency testing of biologics where you need a reliable source of precisely performing cells for years.
tiered cell banking strategy
We strongly promote tiered cell banking starting from a small token stock, followed by a carefully characterized Master Cell Bank (MCB), a reasonably sized Working Cell Bank (WCB) and finally hundreds of aliquots of instaCELLs for consumable use. This approach ensures that you work with cells of the same genealogy and similar passage number throughout the lifecycle of your project or product.
cell bank storage & global on-demand supply
acCELLerate assists you to manage your cell banks and storage logistics. Not every lab is prepared to store thousands of cryovials under properly controlled conditions. Therefore, we provide custom storage for your cell banks and on-demand delivery. This may also include an automatic replenishment of assay ready instaCELLs to enable an uninterrupted supply of qualified cells.
For the quality control of a commercial product, the same validated potency assay often needs to be run at different testing sites. acCELLerate has established a global distribution strategy with cryo-warehouses in Europe, USA, and prospectively Asia. Your affiliate labs and approved CROs & CDMOs can request and share instaCELLs from the same qualified lot to increase the reproducibility of your bioassay across all sites.
let our experts guide you through the process
Because of our broad experience with many different cell types and a lean and transparent quoting process we only need very little basic information to provide you with a proposal for your project. All the information that you provide will be covered by our confidentiality statement.
benefits of instaCELLs embedded in a kit
Some cell-based assays are generically following guidance documents of OECD, EP/USP, or ISO. To meet the demand of testing labs for qualified cells to support these assays, acCELLerate has developed a portfolio of kits which combine assay ready instaCELLs, plates, media, reagents, and controls with a validated protocol.
instaCELL safety testing kits
Chemical ingredients of cosmetics and other products, extractables from medical devices, and pharmaceuticals need to be tested for their safety. New Approach Methodologies (NAM’s) are in the process of replacing animal tests regulated in the respective guidelines.
acCELLerate supports the transition to animal-free assays with the development of safety testing kits, which include ready-to-use instaCELLs:
Cytotoxicity / Biocompatibility
Skin Sensitization / KeratinoSens
Genotoxicity / Micronucleus Assay
Pyrogen Detection / MAT-Assay
instaCELL bioassay kits
Biosimilars of well-established biologics like therapeutic neutralizing antibodies, peptides and cytokines must be tested for their potency by using generic bioassays outlined in the respective monographs of a pharmacopoeia. To add the benefits of assay ready instaCELLs to these tests, the improvement of assay precision and flexibility, acCELLerate has developed generic bioassay kits which include assay ready instaCELLs:
TNF-a neutralization (L-929 rescue)
G-CSF (NFS-60 proliferation)
GM-CSF (TF-1 proliferation)
IL-2 (CTLL-2 proliferation)
You’ll find all our instaCELL kits plus accessory products in our online shop.
cell quality - the essence of a successful assay
If the cells used in a cell-based assay are of inconsistent quality, the assay is likely to fail. By using qualified assay ready instaCELL you exclude the main source of cell variability and bad assay reproducibility. Therefore, it is even more important that we at acCELLerate take extraordinary care about the quality of the cells we prepare.
quality assurance
Aligned with the OECD guidance of Good Cell Culture Practice (GCCP), acCELLerate has established high standards in its lab to enable consistent and reproducible cell maintenance, expansion, cryopreservation, storage, and recovery. Only qualified reagents are used, and all critical equipment is well maintained and qualified for its purpose. To consider the individual requirements of different types of cells, generic SOPs are complemented with Custom Operating Procedures developed for individual cell line projects. These form a strong backbone for the preparation of cell banks to ensure high cell quality and batch-to-batch reproducibility. acCELLerate maintains a quality management system certified according to ISO 9001:2015.
quality control
All the cell banks we prepare will be carefully checked before being released and shipped to you. The standard QC package includes:
Cells: cell recovery, viability, growth, and batch homogeneity
Purity: sterility, test for mycoplasma and adventitious viruses
Identity: STR analysis, species, morphology, and biomarkers
Performance: target expression and functional assays
