Screen anticancer drug in vitro using resonance light scattering technique.

An in vitro screening model using resonance light scattering (RLS) technique with 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) reagent as the reactive probe to target cancer cell was firstly developed. In this model, MTT was reduced by viable cancer cells to produce a purple formazan. Cell viability was proportional to the number of formazan induced strong light scattering signal. The inhibition rate of anticancer drug was found to vary inversely with the H(22)-MTT system RLS intensity. So it was intuitive to see the sequence of the tumor suppressive activity of six anticancer drugs without data processing by RLS/MTT screening spectra. Compared with the traditional MTT method, this method has high sensitivity, low detection limit and quite intuitive screening results which were identical to those obtained from the MTT colorimetric assay.