IMPROVED CELL VIABILITY FOR MULTI-DAY CELL-BASED MICROPLATE READER ASSAYS

Live cell-based assays have augmented or replaced many in vivo tests and are performed routinely in pharmaceutical, environmental and toxicology laboratories to study cell health, cell proliferation, cytotoxicity, transfection levels and many other parameters. When assessing the response of cells to drug or compound treatment, it is often necessary to monitor cellular parameters over the course of several days in order to ascertain the most effective treatment window for a given cell or three-dimensional culture model. Consistent cell health is essential to maintain with these assays to ensure sensitivity, reliability, and valid data. Temperature, humidity, and gas composition are three key factors that must be kept stable to ensure the cells’ survival and assay reproducibility. Maintaining healthy cells ideally involves mirroring the conditions of an incubator inside a microplate reader.
Most microplate readers today have a temperature control feature and can preserve a constant temperature of 37°C during long cell-based experiments. Additionally equipping a reader with a gas control module that can deliver a specified mix of gases, including CO2, can better match incubator conditions to maintain better cell health over extended times. Here we demonstrate the improvement in cell viability that is achieved with a SpectraMax® iD3s Multi-Mode Microplate Reader with SpectraMax aer Gas Mixer. U-2 OS cells were grown in 96-well plates for 72 hours under different incubation conditions. Cell viability was measured by an endpoint luminescent ATP assay at 72 hours or monitored at intervals throughout the time course using the RealTime-Glo™ MT Cell Viability Assay.