We are requesting funds for a Seahorse XFe24 automated cellular respiration and glycolysis analyzer. This instrument is the only instrument on the market that can assess cellular respiration and glycolysis in physiologically relevant cellular models, through non-invasive measurements that provide real time kinetic results. The Seahorse XFe24 will be placed within the shared resource core in the Basic Science Department at NYUCD. The institution will support the instrument and the instrument internal review board will administer instrument oversight. We also request the BioTek Cytation1 Multi Mode Reader for assay normalization. This reader is linked to the Seahorse XFe24 and is operated via unified controller, controlling both BioTek and Seahorse instrument. The major user group spans a few departments at NYUCD and represents both basic and translational research areas such as aging, cancer, diabetes, immunology, and mitochondrial disorders. The NIH funded major users combined will use ~75% of the instrument capacity. Remaining instrument capacity will be made available to any internal or external researcher through an on-line scheduler. The availability of this instrument will meet the specific needs of NYUCD researchers to: 1) monitor attached cells (a crucial consideration for our major users using osteoblasts, osteocytes, ameloblasts, odontoblasts, neurons, and cancer cells), 2) obtain reliable measurements from small numbers of cells (crucial for our users that derive primary cells from mouse genetic models) and, 3) enable screening responses to a wide range of physiologic signals, environmental insults, and genetic alterations in a high throughput format. Currently, our studies using Seahorse XFe24 analyzer for primary cells are done at the NYU School of Medicine, which is ~10 city blocks away from NYUCD. This situation requires transportation of cells and reagents across the city streets and significantly compromises our experiments. Further, the XFe24 analyzer at the NYU School of Medicine serves over 60 investigators and its usage is available from 9AM-5PM during business days, which significantly limit our use time and flexibility in experimental design. Availability of Seahorse XFe24 analyzer will facilitate the research at NYUCD and support the collection of outstanding NIH funded projects specified in this application.
The requested Seahorse XFe24 Extracellular Flux Analyzer to profile metabolic activity and bioenergetic state of cells will enable NYUCD investigators to gain insights into the cellular metabolism of a wide range of skeletal cells including primary osteoblasts, osteocytes, odontoblasts, ameloblasts, as well as neurons, and cancer cells.
