Counting parasites inside host cells is a core readout in antiparasitic drug discovery. Percent infected cells, parasites per cell, or parasite signal intensity all reduce to one metric: per-cell parasite load.

The technical challenge is defining where to measure. You first need to mask host nuclei, then a cytoplasmic mask, detect parasite objects, assign parasites to cells, and measure counts or intensities in each compartment. It's possible in general tools, but every new experiment needs masking, object assignment and pipeline tweaking.

Cytely automates this: segment host nuclei and cytoplasm, detect and assign parasite signals to individual cells, measure parasite counts and intensities per cell, and compute parasite-per-cell metrics. The output is a per-cell parasite load you can plot against dose to build infection/kill curves.

How the assay runs

Segment host cells from cell marker channel → detect parasites as puncta or objects in parasite channel → assign parasites to host cells by spatial containment → count and measure parasite burden per host cell → classify infected vs uninfected by parasite count threshold.

What you provide

  • Ch1: DAPI (host and parasite nuclei)
  • Ch2: host cell marker (e.g., cell body stain or cytoplasmic IF)
  • Ch3: parasite-specific marker (e.g., anti-parasite IF, GFP-expressing parasite, or pathogen-specific stain)

What you get

  • % infected cells per condition
  • Parasite count per host cell
  • Total parasite area per host cell
  • Mean parasite intensity per cell
  • Host cell count

Ready to run

Intracellular protozoan infection (e.g., Toxoplasma, Leishmania, Plasmodium, Trypanosoma), fluorescently labeled or GFP-expressing parasites, anti-parasite IF staining, drug screening for anti-parasitic compounds, host-pathogen co-staining panels.

Inquire for support

Live-cell infection kinetics, parasite life-cycle stage classification, extracellular parasite motility tracking.

Explore the Parasite Infection assay →