Morphology-based assessment of Cd2+ cytotoxicity using microfluidic image cytometry (μFIC)

Abstract

Microfluidic systems have significant implications in the field of in vitro cell-based assays since they may allow conventional cell-based assays to be conducted in an automated and high-throughput fashion. In this study, we combined a simple microfluidic cells-on-chip system with a morphology-based image cytometric analysis approach for the assessment of Cd²⁺ induced apoptosis of Chang liver cell line. A simple and efficient in situ monitoring method for quantifying the progress of a cell death event was developed and is presented here. Reasonable agreement of the estimated EC₅₀ value from this study with those from the literature and a close correlation between the observed changes in cell morphology (i.e., circularity) and the amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation confirmed the validity of this morphology-based microfluidic image cytometric (μFIC) assessment method. We propose this morphology-based μFIC approach as an easy and efficient way to assess cytotoxicity which can be adapted to high-throughput screening platforms for in vitro cytotoxicity assays as well as drug screening.