After you’ve read this post, I hope that you’ll agree that what the title of the post announces is the right assumption. How? Read on!
I invite you to take a look at Cyto-X, which is a ready-for-use cell viability reagent for proliferation and cytotoxicity assays. When added to cell culture, a highly water-soluble tetrazolium salt is reduced by dehydrogenases in live cells to form an orange colored formazan product that is soluble in culture medium. The amount of formazan is directly proportional to the enzymatic activity of dehydrogenases and the number of living cells.
With its high sensitivity and low cytotoxicity, Cyto-X outperforms traditional assays using other tetrazolium salts such as MTT, XTT, MTS or WST-1.
Here are 3 good reasons to try Cyto-X Colorimetric cell counting reagent…
1. It’s more sensitive
Left: Human Dermal Fibroblasts (HDF) were seeded at different concentrations. Cells were counted the next day using the Cyto-X (blue) and MTT (orange) assays.
Right: Bovine Aortic Endothelial Cells (BAOEC) were treated with staurosporine for 16 hours. Cell number was determined by Cyto-X and MTT assays.
2. It’s less toxic
Left: Cyto-X was added to Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVEC) for 24 hours. Following the Cyto-X cell counting assay, HUVEC are still proliferating and capable of uptaking DiL-Ac-LDL, demonstrating HUVEC are metabolically active, and that downstream applications are possible.
Right: By contrast, toxic formazan is formed after the MTT assay and HUVEC are dead.
3. It’s user friendly: fewer steps & less waiting time
So, doesn’t this make cell counting easy? I could also claim “Cell counting made easy and inexpensive!”. Not only is this protocol quicker, it also uses less reagents vs. MTT (no phenol-red medium, no extraction solution, no wash solution, etc) and is as cheap as 0.36 € per test point.
Convinced? Leave your comments or get in touch below!
