When conducting any experiment involving cell culture work, it is imperative to know and understand the overall health-status of the cell population before any treatment protocols are implemented.

Exposure to biological or chemical compounds can have unintended cytotoxic effects on cell cultures. Additionally, cells grown under less than ideal conditions can exhibit less than ideal behaviors. For example, maintaining cells at a cell density that is too low or too high can lead to problematic cell-to-cell communication which could have unforeseen effects on experimental results. As cell death is often an experimental outcome, the ability to further identify the type of cell death occurring within a population is key for properly interpreting the data.

In addition, researchers investigating the effect of their novel drug or therapeutic require accurate tools to assess their experimental outcome and evaluate the overall treatment of the cells. In this case, it is not only important to determine whether a treatment is killing target cells, but also whether these cells are dying due to apoptosis or necrosis.

There is an ever-present need for simple and straightforward tools capable of assessing how cells are dying. ICT’s new Apoptosis vs Necrosis Detection Kit allows for the simultaneous identification of cells that are healthy, entering early apoptosis, late apoptosis, or have become necrotic.

Cell viability assaysCytotoxicity