Inner workings of cells provide stunning images for GE Healthcare competition

San Francisco, CA – GE Healthcare last week announced the winners of this year’s IN Cell Image Competition at the HCA Conference in San Francisco, USA. Each of the three winners, from Asia, Europe and North America, will be rewarded with a trip to New York City in March where their images will be shown on NBC’s high-definition TV screen in Times Square.

This year’s competition saw over 80 beautiful images generated by scientists from around the world using the IN Cell Analyzer system. An expert scientific panel short-listed 30 entries, which then went on to the public vote. Delegates at the High Content Analysis conference in San Francisco also had the opportunity to vote for their favourite image.

High content analysis (HCA) and high content screening (HCS) are essential tools in many areas of life science research and drug discovery. HCA employs cellular assays in a high-throughput imaging and analysis format, which allows researchers to do more complex experiments, to increase the number of questions they can ask while simultaneously decreasing the time taken to achieve their results.

Winning image for Asia:

HeLa cells stained for DNA (blue), tubulin (red) and nuclear mitotic apparatus protein (green) in the area of cancer research. [Asae Igarashi at Kyowa Hakko Kirin Company, Japan]

Winning image for Europe:

Rat hippocampal neurons and astrocytes stained for neuronal βIII-tubulin (green), astrocyte GFAP (red) and DNA (blue) in the area of neurobiology. [Dr Miriam Ascagni at the Advanced Light and Electron Microscopy BioImaging Centre of the DIBI-San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Italy]

Winning image for North America:

Primary porcine trabecular meshwork cells stained for DNA (blue) actin (red) and focal adhesions (green) in the research area of ocular diseases. [Carmen Laethem, Aerie Pharmaceuticals, US]

All 30 short-listed images can be viewed at www.gelifesciences.com/incellcompetition.