In drug delivery systems, uptake, intracellular release, functional expression, and cellular response are often measured in separate assays, making it difficult to identify the true bottleneck limiting performance. As a result, optimization of drug delivery systems can become slow, resource intensive, and reliant on incomplete information.
With a single assay, Nanolive’s platform monitors the complete dynamics of drug delivery, while reducing phototoxicity from labels, helping teams to identify where delivery succeeds or fails, and to compare formulations more effectively.
RNA vector delivery at TRON Mainz
Working with RNA vectors requires simultaneous measurement of transcription and phenotypic effect to assess efficacy, which can be achieved using Nanolive’s live imaging and automated analysis platform.
Mario Perkovic at TRON describes the issues his team face when studying RNA delivery and cell death with endpoint assays in this short clip.
Live analysis of RNA expression and effect can be used to overcome endpoint assay flaws:
- Account for variations in RNA expression and transfection efficiency
- Detect time-dependent events such as the time to peak expression, and the lag between peak expression and peak death
- Detect rare events that happen over a period of days
- Identify mRNA candidates with smallest and largest phenotypic effect
- Increased robustness of data
Explore how in our application note, with case study data from TRON’s RNA delivery experiments.
Quantifying particle uptake in iPSC-derived microglia at bit.bio
Fluorescent tags are used to label nanobeads, organelles and particles, to enable visual monitoring of phagocytosis and material uptake. This process is especially valuable when assessing drug delivery and therapeutic potential of engineered nanoparticles. This case study of particle uptake by microglia illustrates how this process can be visualized and automatically quantified using Nanolive’s LIVE Cytotoxicity Assay.
Read the full case study here.
Proving therapeutic potential at LUCA Science
After developing a proprietary method to isolate intact and functional mitochondria, the LUCA Science team discovered that even with simple co-culture, mitochondria Q were readily taken up by the cells in vitro. Thanks to Nanolive’s live cell imaging, the uptake of mitochondria Q was captured in real-time. President and CEO of LUCA Science, Dr. Rick Tsai told us “That short video from Nanolive has converted a lot of non-believers, seeing is believing.”
Exogenous fluorescently-tagged mitochondria Q (red) are taken up by HeLa cells over the 03 hour 44 minute imaging period. Nanolive’s refractive index imaging allows us to see how the plasma membrane envelops mitochondria, internalizing them. 03 h 44 min after the start of imaging, many mitochondria have accumulated inside each cell. Captured every 4 min 9 s by scientists at LUCA Science.
To learn more about LUCA Science’s work, visit their website here.
Interested in how Nanolive could benefit your drug delivery assessment?
Download our 1 page overview for Biopharma and CRO clients here.
Live cell imaging for nanoparticle delivery and cargo release
In this webinar which is now available on demand, Elizabeth Nelson shares research performed at the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Using the Nanolive system, they discuss the benefits of using a live-cell imaging workflow in comparison to endpoint assays like flow cytometry, quantifying the dynamic uptake of nanoparticles, mRNA cargo delivery and transcription, and cytotoxic responses.
Watch the webinar on demand here.
Key peer-reviewed drug delivery publications featuring Nanolive technology
- Nanoparticle delivery dynamics: E. Nelson et al, ‘Subcellular nanoparticle trafficking investigated with label-free, live cell imaging’. Nanoscale Horizons (2026) https://doi.org/10.1039/D5NH00749F
- Subcellular localization of nanocubes: B. Klebowski et al, ‘Palladium Nanocubes (Pd NCs) and Thiol-PEG Modified Pd NCs (Pd NCs-PEG) for Combating LN229 and U118 Glioblastoma Cells’. ACS Applied Nano Materials (2025) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsanm.5c03062
- Nanoparticle cancer therapy: J. Depciuch et al. ‘Modeling Absorption Dynamics of Differently Shaped Gold Glioblastoma and Colon Cells Based on Refractive Index Distribution in Holotomographic Imaging’. Small (2024) https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202400778
- RNAi therapeutics: H. Pang et al. ‘Bioengineered Bacteriophage-Like Nanoparticles as RNAi Therapeutics to Enhance Radiotherapy against Glioblastomas’. ACS Nano (2023) https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c01102
You can find over 400 publications featuring Nanolive imaging here.
Read our latest news
Webinar – Investigating nanoparticle delivery with label-free live cell imaging
Move beyond endpoints with dynamic EC50
Online walkthrough – Replace fragmented assays: one workflow for cell therapy assessment
