HALO® is the acronym for Hematopoietic / Hemotoxicity Assays via Luminescence output. HALO® is an in vitro proliferation assay system that detects and measures at least 12 different stem, progenitor and precursor cells of the blood-forming (lympho-hematopoietic) system. These different cell populations are present in most blood-forming tissues, including the bone marrow, peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood, spleen, fetal liver and yolk sac. The populations contained in these tissues and organs can be detected using any HALO® Platform from human, non-human primate, dog, rat or mouse. HemoGenix® is also developing the assay for other species to help in veterinary medicine.
HALO® was designed as an alternative, and in many cases a complete replacement, to the 40 year old traditional colony-forming assay, which among other things, suffers from subjectivity due to manual enumeration and complete lack of standardization and validation. Despite these drawbacks, HemoGenix® offers the colony-forming assay as part of its contract research serves and even produces and sells a Colony-Forming Assay Kit Platform called CAMEO™™
The HALO® Platform was introduced as a contract service in March 2002 because of the need for a rapid, non-subjective and standardized hemotoxicity detection system with high throughput capability that could be used at all stages of drug discovery and development. In December 2003, the HALO® Assay Kit Product Line was introduced. Since that time, it has developed into three separate HALO® Platforms, each a highly developed and refined assay tool that can be used by researchers in academia, governmental institutions, clinical facilities and industry alike.
There are now 3 HALO® Platforms:
All three HALO® Platforms can completely replace the colony-forming assay technique and are described in the following pages.
The HALO® family of Platforms propels basic, clinical and hemotoxicity research into the 21st century.
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Compare different HALO® Formats with the Colony-Forming Assay