Cell Health & Death
Measure how cells respond to a treatment: metabolic viability, membrane-damage cytotoxicity, proliferation, apoptosis and ferroptosis, read by plate reader, flow cytometry or microscopy.
Caspase-3/7 activity, mitochondrial membrane potential and live/dead staining.
LDH release, MTT and cytotoxicity kits for membrane damage and cell killing.
EdU incorporation for imaging or flow cytometry, plus CCK-8/WST-8 and MTT.
These assays answer related but distinct questions. Viability assays report the fraction of metabolically active cells; cytotoxicity assays such as LDH release report membrane damage; proliferation assays such as EdU and CCK-8/WST-8 report cell division.
Cell-death assays then tell you how cells are dying. Annexin V and caspase-3/7 mark apoptosis, TUNEL labels the DNA fragmentation of late apoptosis, and lipid peroxidation with iron and glutathione read-outs points to ferroptosis. Combining two or more read-outs gives the most reliable picture of a treatment effect.
Viability assays measure metabolically active cells, cytotoxicity assays measure cell death or membrane damage (for example LDH release), and proliferation assays measure the rate of cell division. They are often used together.
Both measure metabolic activity through tetrazolium reduction. CCK-8/WST-8 produces a water-soluble formazan, so there is no solubilisation step, while MTT is a long-established, economical standard.
Pair Annexin V with a membrane-impermeant dye such as PI, 7-AAD or DAPI. Early apoptotic cells are Annexin V positive and dye negative; late apoptotic and necrotic cells take up the dye.
The Cell Cycle Assay Kit (Red Fluorescence) is listed in the product grid on this page.