There are many good options, and it mostly boils down to personal preference. For convenience I mainly use a cleaved caspase-3 antibody (R&D Systems) which works reliably in many different assays. For IF you should keep in mind that many tissues have strong autofluorescence particularly in the green channel, so a red secondary Ab is preferable.

Other assays I've used in the past include the Roche M30 Cytodeath Kit, and a TUNEL kit. Both work fine and require less optimisation because most of the reagents are included, but it's more expensive in the long run and you lose flexibility.

Hi Alice. I would pass this question to a colleague Bernard Callus who has worked in this area for a long time.

There are many good options, and it mostly boils down to personal preference. For convenience I mainly use a cleaved caspase-3 antibody (R&D Systems) which works reliably in many different assays. For IF you should keep in mind that many tissues have strong autofluorescence particularly in the green channel, so a red secondary Ab is preferable.

Other assays I've used in the past include the Roche M30 Cytodeath Kit, and a TUNEL kit. Both work fine and require less optimisation because most of the reagents are included, but it's more expensive in the long run and you lose flexibility.

Thanks George! much appreciated!

Stefan thanks! Yes, we are thinking of trying the R&D system for IHC using the Caspase 3 antibody in combination with TUNEL. There is a protocol on R&D website where they use two different chromogen substrates (DAB & AEC). We might give it a go. 

FYI: https://www.rndsystems.com/resources/protocols/technical-notes-detection-apoptosis-double-labeling-tunel-and-active-caspase-3

I have used Caspase-3 antibody (from cell signalling) and kit (from abcam) or TUNEL assay kit (from Promega). All these worked fine for me and showing clear results