In bio­med­ical research, cryo-transmission elec­tron microscopy allows to image pro­teins, viruses, cells, sec­tions of tis­sues, and phar­ma­co­log­i­cal sam­ples in their nat­ural, hydrated envi­ron­ment. Com­pared to con­ven­tional meth­ods such as neg­a­tive stain­ing that use dry­ing and con­trast­ing steps, this allows supe­rior struc­tural preser­va­tion and unprece­dented res­o­lu­tion and con­fi­dence into results.

This tech­nique not only demands ded­i­cated instru­men­ta­tion but also requires spe­cific exper­tise for spec­i­men prepa­ra­tion, han­dling, and microscopy: Nex­pe­rion offers train­ings and appli­ca­tion sup­port in

• Immer­sion freez­ing
• Cryo-TEM basics
• Auto­mated data acqui­si­tion
• Cryo-electron tomog­ra­phy
• …

A spe­cial focus of exper­tise is spec­i­men prepa­ra­tion by immer­sion freez­ing with the Leica EM GP, a semi­au­to­matic freez­ing appa­ra­tus for thin spec­i­mens on elec­tron microscopy grids (immer­sion freez­ing). This instru­ment was devel­oped in a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Leica Microsys­tems and the for­mer lab of Guenter Resch, who is now the owner of Nex­pe­rion, and has since been used to pro­duce results pub­lished in numer­ous papers on struc­tural biol­ogy, cell biol­ogy, and phar­ma­col­ogy.