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Rapid label-free direct cell counting in measurement of cell proliferation for compound screening

Cell proliferation is one of the most widely used assay types across a broad range of biological disciplines. Due to their sensitive nature, cell proliferation assays are commonly used to measure cytotoxicity and/or efficacy of drug candidates in oncology, immunology, and stem cells, among other fields.


Despite their widespread use, many traditional proliferation assays are severely limiting because they are invasive and destructive to the cell samples, and rely on indirect methods for determining cell proliferation. For example, many assays only estimate cell number based on measurements of metabolic activity (e.g., MTT, Alamar Blue), ATP content, total protein concentration (SRB), or incorporation of dNTPs (3H-thymidine, BrdU uptake). Metabolic function assays (e.g., MTT) only provide relative cell counts, leading to misinterpretation of results when compounds impact metabolism directly. Assays that rely on flow cytometers, hemacytometers, or microscopes are generally destructive in nature due to harvesting and/or staining of cells, and generally analyze only a sampled proportion of treated cells. These constraints preclude using the cells being analyzed for any subsequent purpose, and also prevent kinetic monitoring of the same cell population over time

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