| Advantages | Disadvantages |
---|---|---|
Neutral red uptake assay | 1. Cell enumeration independent of enzymatic conversion of dye [30,31] | 1. Some reports of test compound interference [32] |
MTT assay | 1. Gold standard for cytotoxicity testing | 1. Conversion to formazan crystals depends on metabolic rate and number of mitochondria resulting in many known interferences [4,12-17,33] |
2. Suitable for high-throughput screening and miniaturisation [34] | ||
Resazurin reduction assay | 1. Few wash steps involved [19] | 1. Conversion to resorufin depend on enzymatic conversion [18] |
2. Follow-up assays can be performed on same cells as assay is not cytotoxic [32,35] | 2. Absorbance-based method less sensitive than fluorescence-based method | |
Sulforhodamine B assay | 1. Cell enumeration dependent on protein content thus no test compound interference [21,22] | 1. Numerous wash steps involved, but fixation required [22] |
2. Highly reproducible | 2. Less sensitive with non-adherent cells |