High Content Analysis is the only cell biology technique that is relatively high throughput and return many readings in a single experiment.

Why HCA?

The phrase "you can't have your cake and eat it" applies pretty much to most biological assays. Either an assay will give one reading but is high throughput or it can return many measurements but its throughput is low. High Content Analysis is the only technique which supports throughput (assays conducted in 96 or 384 well plates) and can return literally dozens of measurements. With HCA you really can have your cake and eat it!.

Multiplexing
Many assays allow multiplexing. The number of measurements you can make using High Content screening far exceeds that obtained using flow cytometry because all the morphological information can also be converted into numerical measurements. For example, drug screening with our apoptosis assay will give you independent measures on the commitment and execution phases of apoptosis. Alternatively, you might want to swap the execution marker for LC3 and so look in the same cells at apoptosis and autophagy.

Subpopulation Analysis
Like flow cytometry, you can also do subpopulation analysis. For example, you could select (using the nuclear stain) all the cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and then examine how many in this subpopulation display caspase activation. Click on the "Assay Examples" panel (right) to access examples of typical HCA experiments.

Compound Fingerprinting
The potential for many numerical readouts using HCA means you can often replace several traditional assays with one High Content Screen to obtain a detailed "fingerprint" of your compound series.