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In Vitro Cytotoxicity Analysis: MTT/XTT, Trypan Blue Exclusion

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Animal Cell Culture: Principles and Practice

Abstract

In vitro cytotoxicity analyses have played a major role in the current drug discovery processes. These analyses enable the measurement of target cell death, growth, reproduction and morphological changes before and after the treatment with cytotoxic compounds. The cytotoxicity tests. Indeed, testing a drug-like compound directly in human or animal models is way more expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, in vitro cytotoxic tests on the primary or secondary cell cultures are a simpler, faster and highly sensitive technique that can save time as well as the sacrifices of animal models upon the failure of the experiment. Different categories of in vitro cytotoxic and cell viability assays include the dye exclusion methods, colorimetric assay, fluorometric assays and luminometric assay. However, the most common types of in vitro cytotoxic assays measure the number of remaining viable cells majorly via assaying the activity of mitochondrial enzymes with tetrazolium salts. In this chapter, we discuss the different in vitro cytotoxic assay methods for analysing the degree of damaged, dead or viable cells.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Emerging Diseases, Department of Biotechnology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India

    Shalini Mani & Geeta Swargiary

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  1. Shalini Mani
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  2. Geeta Swargiary
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Mani, S., Swargiary, G. (2023). In Vitro Cytotoxicity Analysis: MTT/XTT, Trypan Blue Exclusion. In: Animal Cell Culture: Principles and Practice. Techniques in Life Science and Biomedicine for the Non-Expert. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19485-6_18

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