Cytotoxic

The measurement and control of cell viability is an essential technique in any laboratory focused on cellular research. This skill allows the optimization of cell culture conditions as well as the study of the effect of cytokines, growth factors or hormonal activity. Most importantly, the cytostatic nature of anticancer compounds in toxicological tests, the efficacy of therapeutic chemicals in drug screening, and cell-mediated cytotoxicity can all be assessed by quantifying and monitoring viability and growth. cell.

Cell viability characteristics include cellular metabolic activity and cell membrane integrity. One method of measuring metabolic activity is to incubate the cells with a tetrazolium salt such as MTT, which is cleaved into a formazan product stained by metabolically active cells. The fluorescent green fluorescent dye Calcein AM can measure intracellular esterase activity, which is another indicator of cell viability.