Electroporation Made Easy For Hard-To-transfect Cells

By Sandy Tseng, Anthony Lauer and Laura Juckem, Mirus Bio LLC, Madison, Wisconsin USA

Electroporation is a highly effective, versatile technique for the delivery of molecular cargo to many different cell types and tissues of biomedical relevance. Despite its efficacy, electroporation is under-utilized because of the perceived initial up-front cost in purchasing an electroporator and its association with high cytotoxicity. Another deterrent to using this method is that some widely used electroporation systems only allow users to select from non-adjustable, pre-defined programs which obfuscate basic parameters, e.g. voltage, of the electrical pulse to be delivered. Here, we dispel the misconception that electroporation is necessarily fraught with high cytotoxicity and complexity by introducing the cost-effective Ingenio® EZporator® Electroporation System, which incorporates ‘what you see, is what you get’ design principles. By simply adjusting the sole input (voltage) of the Ingenio® EZporator®, gene delivery efficiency and cellular viability can be easily optimized for cell types which are notoriously difficult to transfect with chemical transfection reagents.