Bioassays for anticancer activities

The MTT/MTS in vitro cell proliferation assay is one of the most widely used assays for evaluating preliminary anticancer activity of both synthetic derivatives and natural products and natural product extracts. The highly reliable, colorimetric based assay is readily performed on a wide range of cell lines. This assay gives an indication of whole cell cytotoxicity; however, to determine the exact molecular target further assays need to be performed. Of these, kinase inhibition assays are also one of the most widespread enzyme inhibition screening assays performed. Kinases are enzymes that play a key role in a number of physiological processes and their inhibitors have been found to exhibit anticancer activity against various human cancer cell lines. Herein, we describe the methods for performing both in vitro MTT/MTS cytotoxicity and kinase enzyme inhibition assays. These are two of the most useful anticancer screening techniques available that are relatively economical and can be easily and routinely performed in the laboratory to characterize anticancer activity. Both assays are highly versatile and can be modified to test against targeted disease processes by using specific kinase enzymes or cell lines.