A Method for the In Vitro Cytotoxicity Assessment of Anti-cancer Compounds and Materials Using High Content Screening Analysis

Abstract

To date, there is a large bottleneck associated with cancer drug design and development: a lack of appropriate methodologies for screening their potential toxicity. This issue not only causes a high attrition rate for these compounds but also slows down the drug discovery process in general. To overcome this problem, robust, accurate, and reproducible methodologies for assessing anti-cancer compounds are essential. Multiparametric technique and high-throughput analysis, in particular, are favored due to the time- and cost-effective way in which they assess large panels of materials, and due to their large informational output. Following extensive work within our group, we have developed a protocol for assessing the toxicity of anti-cancer compounds using a high-content screening and analysis (HCSA) platform, which is both time-effective and reproducible.

Keywords: A549; Fluorescent imaging; HepG2; High content screening; In vitro cytotoxicity.