The LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay System from BPS Bioscience is designed for high-throughput, homogeneous, sensitive luminescence quantification of metabolically active, viable mammalian cells.
Assessing viable cell numbers in cell culture 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 capability. 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 approaches can be used to assess cell viability. 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 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.
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.
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 that allows cell lysis and luciferase activity measurement in just one step, it offers a simple and sensitive method for cytotoxicity studies and cell culture optimization.
LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay System can be used at low cell densities without loss of sensitivity, and up to 100,000 cells/ well, with a half-time of more than 5 hours. Left panel: Jurkat cells were plated, at different cell densities and the metabolically active viable cell fraction in culture was measured with LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay System after a 10-minute incubation period with LIVE-Step™ Cell Assay Solution. Data is shown as background-subtracted luminescence (the inlet graph shows linearity with low number of cells, <1,000 cells/well). Right Panel: Jurkat cells were plates at a broad range of cell densities and metabolically active cell fraction in culture was measured after 10 minutes or 300 minutes (5 hours). Data is shown as background-subtracted luminescence.
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