Hello, I was wondering if anyone knew of methods to increase intracellular calcium levels? I am currently working with cardiac glycosides which are know to increase intracellular calcium levels and would like to compare them with other agents that increase calcium as well. I am using the non-small cell lung cancer line A549.
Hi Evan,
If you don't have any restriction on how you trigger intracellular calcium increase then you can use a calcium ionophore such as Ionomycin. An alternative is to use Thapsigargin which will block the SERCA pump and prevent calcium uptake into the ER thus causing elevated intracellular calcium levels.
Hope this helps.
The standard way is to use the ionophore, A23187, which allows calcium in through the plasma membrane. There is a lot of literature on it and some suggesting that its effect differs from that of ionomycin. You may want to read up on it before choosing between them.
Thank you both for the insight. I will read into both the ionophore methods and SERCA pump inhibition.
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