Confocal Imaging and k-Means Clustering of GABA and mGluR Mediated Modulation of Ca Spiking in Hippocampal Neurons.

Imaging cytosolic calcium in neurons is emerging as a new tool in neurological disease diagnosis, drug screening, and toxicity testing. Ca oscillation signatures show a significant variation depending on GPCR targeting agonists. Quantification of Ca spike trains in ligand induced Ca oscillations remains challenging due to their inherent heterogeneity in primary culture.

Comparison of Calcium Dynamics and Specific Features for G Protein-Coupled Receptor-Targeting Drugs Using Live Cell Imaging and Automated Analysis.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are targets for designing a large fraction of the drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. For GPCR-targeting drug screening using cell-based assays, measurement of cytosolic calcium has been widely used to obtain dose-response profiles. However, it remains challenging to obtain drug-specific features due to cell-to-cell heterogeneity in drug-cell responses obtained from live cell imaging.