Different Methods for Cell Viability and Proliferation Assay: Essential Tools in Pharmaceutical Studies

Background and Objective: The ratio of live cells to total cells in a sample is a definition for cell viability or cell toxicity. The assessment of the viable cells plays a critical role in all processes of the cell culture workflows. Overall, they are used to evaluate the survival of cells and also to optimize culture or experimental conditions following treatment with different agents or compounds, like during a drug screen. In most cases, the measurement of cell viability is the primary purpose of the experiments, for example, in pharmaceutical studies to evaluate agents' toxicity. Methods: A literature research was conducted on cell viability assays from MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science and Scopus. Results: There is a wide range of cell viability assays and different parameters such as cost, speed, and complexity of a test effect to determine the choosing method. However, each method has some advantages and disadvantages and none of them are 100% perfect. Conclusion: Accordingly, it seems that the simultaneous utility of at least two assays will cover disadvantages to demonstrate the effects of different agents on different cell types. For instance, when one assay measures cell metabolic health, the other one checks cells permeability. Therefore, by this strategy, a researcher can report with more confidence the effective doses of the examined therapeutic agents.