Discussion

Conventional technology of in vivo-like test for anti-cancer drug screening is based on expensive endpoint assay of 3D cell culture with extracellular matrix necessitating time-consuming experimental process and labeling agents causing interference with a target compound that provide low reliability. The previous device methods depend on the pharmaceutical mode of action, and give no relation to the conventional method. And a separate set of experiment is required to obtain both efficacy and toxicity results. Our new technology overcomes these all problems sensing dynamic cellular reaction against target compound(s) by laser.
The technological break points are as follows.
1. New device is developed for real-time monitoring of mitochondrial polarization status within live cells without both labeling and invasion.
2. Early mitochondrial polarization change rate after addition of target compound (s) is revealed as a key to quantitatively predict the final compound efficacy and toxicity against live cells.
3. 3D cell activity is obtained by conditioning 2D attached cells covered by extracellular matrix for short time with no cell division.