I am treating my cells using increasing concentrations of drug, and the drug is dissolved in 100% DMSO. I limit the concentration of the DMSO in the final media with the drug to 0.5% for the highest drug concentration, so basically I will end up with a range of 0.1-0.5% DMSO+drug for the different concentrations.
Does that means that I need to normalize to untreated controls with the same percentage of DMSO vehicle corresponding to the different treatment concentrations?
The short answer is Yes. DMSO in culture medium alters gene expression in cells. The response depends upon cell type.
I will support the contributions of Dr. Choubey and Dr. Gallo-Oller that you actually require a negative control to indicate that DMSO is not actually taking part in the cell death. However, since your highest concentration of DMSO in the drug is 0.5%, I would rather suggest you use this to check the effect of the DMSO on the cells rather than varying the concentration of DMSO.
Good luck.
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