Differential Staining Cytotoxicity (DiSC) assay is the prototype for a closely related family of assays based on the concept of total cell kill, or, in other words, cell death occurring in the entire population of tumor cells. It is probably the most versatile of the cell-death end points, in that it (1) can ...
Validation of new therapeutic targets calls for the advance in innovative assays that probe both spatial and temporal relationships in signaling networks. Cell death assays have already found a widespread use in pharmacological profiling of anticancer drugs. Such assays are, howev ...
Cell death by apoptosis has been studied for many years using fluorescently labeled annexin V. Annexin V shows high affinity for the phosphatidylserine that becomes enriched in the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane during apoptosis, but not necrosis, allowing differentiation betw ...
The Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis (Comet) assay is a simple, versatile and sensitive method for measuring DNA damage in individual cells, allowing the determination of heterogeneity of response within a cell population. The basic alkaline technique described is for the determinat ...
With conventional cytogenetic screening by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) using genomic tilepath clones, identification of genes in oncogenic chromosome translocations is often laborious, notably if the region of interest is gene-dense. Conventional molecul ...
A number of in vitro assays have been developed to study tumor cell motility. Historically, assays have been mainly monocellular, where carcinoma cells are studied in isolation. Scratch assays can be used to study the collective and directional movement of populations of cells, whereas two c ...
Measurement of DNA content was one of the first applications to be developed in the use of flow cytometry and is still used routinely in many experimental and, to a lesser extent, clinical studies. The goal of this technique is to produce a high quality DNA profiles for accurate analysis of DNA content and c ...
Homeobox genes code for transcription factors which have a strong impact on cellular behavior, including differentiation, proliferation, and survival. Therefore, upon deregulation these genes may turn into oncogenes, contributing substantially to cancerogenesis. Among ...
The basics of cell culture are now relatively common, though it was not always so. The pioneers of cell culture would envy our simple access to manufactured plastics, media and equipment for such studies. The prerequisites for cell culture are a well lit and suitably ventilated laboratory with a lam ...
Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is abnormally expressed in anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) and its expression associated with chromosomal translocations involving the ALK gene at 2p23. These translocations lead to the synthesis of novel chimeric proteins that retain the C- ...
Determining the clonal origins of malignant B-cells will have an impact on disease understanding and management. In this regard, immunoglobulin variable (V) region gene analysis already is having a significant impact in delineating the tumor cell of origin. It can identify, among other fe ...
Highly aggressive, rapidly growing tumors are often hypoxic, owing to an inadequate supply relative to consumption of oxygen (O2) in the expanding tumor mass, or growth in tissues with physiologically low O2 concentrations (such as bone marrow). Selection of tumor cells that can grow or survi ...
We provide a detailed explanation of the procedure of the histoculture drug response assay (HDRA) with 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazolyl-2)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) end point among several modified HDRA procedures. Fresh surgical specimens are cut into approx 1- to 2-mm3 pie ...
The assessment of the degree or rate of cellular proliferation and cell viability is critical to the assessment of the effects of drugs, antibodies, or cytokines on both normal and malignant cell populations. This can be accomplished by either direct or indirect counting methods. Direct coun ...
For effective cancer chemotherapy, chemosensitivity testing of anticancer drugs should be performed using fresh surgical specimens obtained from the cancer. We have developed a new in vitro chemosensitivity test named the collagen gel droplet embedded culture drug sensitivity ...
The differential staining cytotoxicity (DiSC) assay is one of the total cell-kill assays that can be used for drug resistance testing. Numerous publications have demonstrated the clinical value of chemosensitivity testing with that assay (and similar ones). The DiSC assay is successf ...
The sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay was developed by Skehan and colleagues to measure drug-induced cytotoxicity and cell proliferation for large-scale drug-screening applications. Its principle is based on the ability of the protein dye sulforhodamine B to bind electrostatically a ...
The clonogenic cell survival assay determines the ability of a cell to proliferate indefinitely, thereby retaining its reproductive ability to form a large colony or a clone. This cell is then said to be clonogenic. A cell survival curve is therefore defined as a relationship between the dose of the ...
High-sensitivity cytotoxicity assays refer to assays that can detect high levels of cell kill, to many powers of 10, and that can detect, ideally, a single remaining viable cell. Two such assays are described here, which have been used with Raji B-lymphoma cells, and are applicable to other nonadher ...
This overview chapter presents the importance of chemosensitivity testing for screening new therapeutic agents, identifying patterns of chemosensitivity for different types of tumors, establishing patterns of cross-resistance and sensitivity in treatment naive and re ...

