LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay System: Redefining Simplicity and Accuracy in High-throughput Cell Viability Assays
Scientist
on
November 21, 2024
This blog post was written by BPS Bioscience, a biotechnology development and manufacturing company focused on innovating proteins, antibodies, cell lines, lentiviruses and assay kits for biopharmaceutical and academic research. Their services are available on the Scientist.com marketplace.
Assessing viable cell numbers in cell cultures is a crucial process across many biological fields. Cell viability refers to the proportion of living cells within a population, often assessed to determine the health of cells in culture and how cells respond to treatments including drug treatments, environmental changes or internal stress. A viable cell is a cell that maintains its normal biological functions, including energy production, membrane integrity and division. Understanding cell viability is key to evaluating how cells thrive or die under different conditions, for example, allowing researchers to optimize growth conditions in cell culture. These measurements are essential in various research areas, including drug discovery, toxicology, cancer biology and immunotherapy.
Cell viability assays are sometimes used to assess cell proliferation, since the number of viable cells in a culture increases proportionally to the number of total cells. Some experimental designs may confound cell proliferation and cell viability effects, which should be kept in mind when analyzing your experiment.
Several methods can be used to assess cell viability. Selecting the right assay depends on the question that needs to be answered, assay sensitivity and compatibility with other techniques. In many cases, combining complementary methods provides the most reliable results. With the continued development of new assay technologies, researchers dispose of an ever-expanding toolkit for improving experimental outcomes.
Traditionally, trypan blue exclusion and manual cell counting were standard methods. While automated cell counters now offer convenience, they may not be optimal for high-throughput applications. Enzyme-based assays, such as those using dehydrogenase activity, provide a scalable alternative by indirectly measuring cell viability through enzymatic activity. ATP-based luminescence assays, on the other hand, offer a more direct, sensitive approach. By employing a stable firefly luciferase, ATP-based assays yield stable luminescence readings over extended periods. Compared to other techniques, ATP-based luminescence assays are generally more sensitive, reliable and straightforward to implement, making them particularly well-suited for high-throughput screening.
When choosing a viability assay, consider the following factors:
- Experimental Goals: Are you evaluating drug toxicity, immune cell killing or general cell health?
- Assay Sensitivity and Throughput: ATP-based assays offer higher sensitivity and are ideal for high-throughput platforms, while membrane integrity assays are useful for quick viability checks.
- Cell Model Used: Some assays may work better for specific cell types. For example, suspension cells may be easier to analyze using flow cytometry-based membrane integrity assays or luciferase-based assays that do not require washes.
- Equipment: Do you have the flow cytometer or the luminometer required to read the results?
- Data Requirements: Do you need quantitative results (e.g., ATP levels) or qualitative insights (e.g., cell staining)? Combining multiple assays can provide more comprehensive sets of data.
BPS Bioscience now offers the LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay System, a cellular viability reagent for metabolically active mammalian cells, allowing scientists to optimize cell culture conditions or measure compound cytotoxicity with confidence.
Based on a single reagent allowing cell lysis and luciferase activity measurement in just one step, it offers a simple and sensitive method for cytotoxicity studies and cell culture optimization.
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