The CyTOF2 mass cytometer analyzes individual cells labeled with stable heavy metal isotopes using Time-of-Flight (TOF) Inductively Coupled Plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) technology.
Mass cytometry offers the ability to simultaneously determine at least 40 biomarkers in single cells.
This permits to recognize extremely rare cell types in mixed populations, including for instance cancer stem cells, and provides a snapshot of a wide distribution of protein modifications.
In addition bar coding approaches vastly increase the throughput of a single analysis and contributes to decrease the cost of each assay.