Luminescent Cell Viability Testing

The LCM assay allows users to validate their primary reporter assay data by determining if their test compound treatments exert mitogenic, cytostatic or cytotoxic activities on the reporter cells. The occurrence of such adverse non-specific effects will always undermine the accurate assessment of a test compound’s potency and/or efficacy as a modulator of receptor function.

When screening test compounds for antagonist activities (or inverse-agonist) it is particularly important to quantify changes in the relative number of live reporter cells at the assay endpoint. Test compounds that exert cytostatic, cytotoxic, or cytolytic activities invariably generate “false-positive” results in an antagonist screen. In such cases, the observed drop in luciferase activity will be incorrectly attributed to inhibition of the nuclear receptor by the test compound. In reality, however, the treatment compound has pushed the reporter cells into division arrest, apoptosis, necrosis, or lysis.

It is important to run this assay in multiplex when designing a study that looks at antagonist or inverse-agonist activities.