Assay Kits for Lead Discovery and Optimization: Precise & Dependable Solutions

Each kit includes luciferase reporter cells, an assay plate, all required reagents (optimized culture media, positive-control agonist, and detection reagent), and a detailed Technical Manual. A luminometer is required for Relative Light Unit (RLU) measurements.

INDIGO's Nuclear Receptor Assay Kits use transiently transfected cells, less prone to genetic drift and batch-to-batch variations. Moreover, they do not require cell culture, significantly reducing time and contamination risks. Simply thaw the reporter cells, and you are ready to perform the assay.

INDIGO’s Nuclear Receptor Assay Kits are not for diagnostic purposes.

We do not recommend normalizing RLU data to cell numbers or protein content. The suspension of reporter cells is a ‘master reagent’ that should be dispensed with high precision into all assay plate wells. Any significant downstream variability in cell number or health will result from cytotoxicity induced by the test compound treatments. To identify and weed out false-positive data, it is essential to perform cytotoxicity analyses for antagonist-mode assays (and inverse-agonist mode assays). INDIGO’s Live Cell Multiplex (LCM) Assay works well for that purpose. However, attempting to normalize RLU data from treated cells in metabolic crisis to untreated, healthy control cells can result in gross misinterpretations of the data when performing cell-based trans-activation assays (which rely on the coordinated cell-cycle processes of gene induction, transcription, translation, mRNA and protein turn-over) “healthy cells” and “dying cells” are not equal units, so attempting to normalize assay data to any cell-related endpoint is not a sound method.

The concentration of organic solvent carried over into the assay wells should not exceed 0.1%. We recommend no more than 0.4% DMSO carry-over into the assay wells.