MTS Cell Proliferation Assay

Cell proliferation is a vital indicator to understand the mechanisms in action of

certain genes, proteins and pathways that involve in cell survival or death.
Furthermore, cell proliferation plays an important role in regulating the
development of bodies and organs, especially in all multicellular organisms. If
cells proliferate unsystematically, bodies or organs would become mere cell
masses and proper cell proliferation is essential for maintenance of sizes,
morphology and functions of organs. Cell proliferation is also involved in many
important processes during development including oncogenesis, aging and so
on. From these aspects, cell proliferation is significant for development and
also related biological areas and many methods has been development for
the determination of cell proliferation. MTS assay is one of the most widely
used methods for the quantification of cell proliferation.
MTS assay is a colorimetric method for sensitive quantification of viable cells
in cell proliferation assay. The NAD(P)H-dependent dehydrogenase enzymes
in metabolically active cells could cause the reduction of MTS tetrazolium
compound and generate the colored formazan product that is soluble in cell
culture media. Since viable cells can convert the MTS tetrazolium compound
to the soluble and colored formazan product, there will yield a significant
increase in color intensity, which could be easily quantified by measuring the
absorbance at 490-500 nm. The MTS assay is a convenient and high
throughput assay which is performed by adding the regent into the cell culture
media without the intermittent steps and requires no washing or solubilization
step. This assay is also simple, cost-effective and with many other
advantages.
The MTS assay can be used for the researches on cell proliferation in
response to external stimulus such as cytokines, cytotoxic reagent and growth
factors, ect. Since this assay can be used for the analysis of cytotoxic
compounds such as anticancer drugs and pharmaceutical compounds, this
assay can be also widely applied for the development of new drugs.