Illuminating development

KPL comjugate sales brightened by Thermo's DyLight technology

Lloyd Dunlap
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ROCKFORD, Ill.—Capitalizing on the steady growth of optical imaging, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. and KPL Inc. have signed a non-exclusive agreement giving KPL global rights to use Thermo Scientific DyLight fluorescent dyes in combination with KPL's extensive line of antibodies and proteins.

Noting that optical instrumentation has become both more advanced and more affordable, Thermo's Steve Shiflett, technical product manager, protein detection, says fluorescent detection can be used in almost any life science research. Standard dyes, such as fluorescein, have two shortcomings—poor photostability and relatively broad emission spectra. In many higher-end microscopy applications photostability is a must. In confocal microscopy, for example, Shiflett notes that 3D images are created from as many as 300-400 scans over several minutes. The "incredibly photostable" DyLight dyes are excellent for these applications, he notes. Also, in multi-color analysis, the broad emission spectra of many standard dyes can cause emission peaks to overlap, increasing background. DyLight produces much sharper, narrower emission spectra, eliminating the problem.

KPL conjugates DyLight dyes to its range of affinity-purified antibodies to meet a variety of needs for sensitive fluorescent detection, including multicolor analysis in fluorescence microscopy, Western blotting, flow cytometry and related fluorescent applications.

The use of multiple colors allows researchers to look at multiple targets on the same tissue. For example, dual-color Western blots can be used to look at two proteins, each dyed a different color. DyLight dyes' high water solubility provides another advantage since, when dyes are conjugated to antibodies, precipitation can result if the dye is less water soluble.

KPL expects DyLight conjugates "to be a significant addition to our line and overall revenue," says Les Kirkegaard, director of marketing for KPL. The company plans to expand its offering of DyLight conjugates later this year using a complete series of dyes across the visible spectrum. "Researchers will benefit from the combination of brilliant dyes and KPL's high-performance antibodies and streptavidin," he adds.

Kirkegaard & Perry Laboratories, aka KPL, was founded in 1979 and remains privately held. The company develops, manufactures and markets high quality immunochemicals for life science and in vitro diagnostics. KPL is said to have pioneered the development of large-scale affinity purification of highly specific antibodies, a major factor in the successful application of ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) technology for the detection of infectious diseases. Since then KPL has introduced over 600 reagents and complete assay kits for protein visualization and nucleic acid detection that address the needs of cell biology, immunology, protein chemistry and molecular biology scientists.

 

Lloyd Dunlap

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