LINCOLN, Neb., June 7 /PRNewswire/ — LI-COR Biosciences reports that researchers at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine have described a new In-Cell Western (ICW) assay to investigate drug effects on intracellular targets with speed and precision using infrared fluorescence. In a paper recently published in Current Alzheimer Research, the author’s state that, not only does the ICW assay enable rapid and consistent quantification of changes in Tau protein, but also allows simultaneous detection of toxicity.

In addition, the ICW assay provides an innovative approach toward rapidly and reliably screening compound libraries for proteins implicated in many diseases associated with abnormal protein accumulation, such as tau, synuclein and huntingtin that are now primarily analyzed by standard Western blot. Using the ICW assay for drug efficacy on endogenous levels of tau protein species targets, researchers demonstrated that several drug compounds were effective at lowering tau levels in the absence of toxicity.

Additional information on this research and In-Cell Westerns can be found at www.licor.com/Tau.