VectaCell Trolox is an antifading additive for live cell imaging. It is a stock solution of the antioxidant Trolox (6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic acid) in filtered ethanol. Trolox is a water-soluble and cell-permeable analog of vitamin E that efficiently prevents formation of various reactive oxygen species, such as singlet oxygen (¹O₂), superoxide anion (O₂^–) or hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂).

VectaCell Trolox contains both Trolox and its oxidized form Trolox-quinone. This system reduces photo-bleaching and blinking during live cell imaging,^{1, 2} and has also been shown to have a cytoprotective effect and low cytotoxicity for different cell lines.³

Trolox has been used to reduce fluorophore bleaching¹ as well as the fluorophore blinking² during the observation of fluorescent labels. Although the mechanism is not completely understood, it has been attributed to the combination of its oxygen-scavenger capacity that prevents oxidative bleaching and the complementary reduction reaction that helps prevent blinking.

VectaCell Trolox is supplied as a convenient 100 mM stock solution.

References:

1. Rasnik et al. Nonblinking and long-lasting single-molecule fourorescence imaging. (2006) Nat. Meth. 3:891-893
2. Cordes et al. On the Mechanism of Trolox as Antiblinking and Antibleaching Reagent. (2009) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131:5018-5019
3. Wu et al. The cytoprotective effect of Trolox demonstrated with three types of human cells. (1990) Biochem. Cell Biol. 68: 1189-1194