Understand Cell Toxicity With In Vitro Cytotoxicity Screenings

Gaining data on if therapeutic compounds are toxic to cells (cytotoxicity) is a critical first step to understanding the long term viability of a set of compounds in a drug discovery program. If a given set of test articles causes cytotoxicity in human or animal cell lines they are not likely to succeed in later animal studies or in the clinic.

Cytotoxicity screens are used early in the drug discovery pipeline to identify lead compounds and rule out compounds that are likely to cause drug failure. Among these early screens there are a number of assays used to understand potential drug liabilities due cytotoxicity. The first cytotoxicity assays often run by organizations are known as “cell viability assays”. Cell viability assays frequently take the form of a low cost ATP assay that allows compounds to be rapidly be compared to reference compounds. These early  cell viability studies are often “High throughput” meaning a large number of compounds are run to rank order test articles based on general toxicity.

Additional cytotoxicity screens include assays that study specific mechanisms of toxicity. These mechanistic cytotoxicity screens are often run after initial cell viability studies to give greater detail on the causes of toxicity to the researcher. However, mechanistic in vitro research comes at a higher cost so usually only a select number of lead compounds are run through these screens.

Selecting a Contract Research Organization (CRO) to Perform Cytotoxicity Screens

Complete your early cytotoxicity studies with CRO known for having expertise in the area of in vitro toxicology and cell based models.

IONTOX's cytotoxicity screens range from predictive multi-endpoint models to standard cell viability screens (ATP) to rank order compounds.

Here are a number of assays used by IONTOX  to assess cytotoxicity:

●    Phospholipidosis Steatosis
●    Oxidative Stress
●    Cell Viability
●    Mitotoxicity
●    Cytotoxicity Panel

To learn more about Cytotoxicity Screening, visit https://www.iontox.com/cytotoxicity-screening/ today.

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