I am using 1M NaOH solution to dissolve a drug. I am trying to estimate its IC50 using MTT assay. The data sheet says that the drug is soluble in 1M Naoh at 50mg/ml. Has anyone had experience using NaOH as diluent? Kindly help.
Most cell culture media have buffering capacity to resist a pH change. Therefore, a drug solution in 1 N NaOH can be diluted to some extent without altering the pH of the culture medium. Further, some cell-types can tolerate moderate pH changes better than others. Therefore, one needs to optimize the treatment conditions with NaOH alone and drug in NaOH to identify optimum conditions.
Thank you Dr. Choubey, is there any other safer alternative to dilute the drug, like DMSO? will it affect the drug properties ?
DMSO is a good alternative, it can be added to the cell culture medium in concentrations up to 1.0%
.2 N NaOH for gastric cancer cells is fine it also do not changes the pH of media.
If you are concerned with the alteration of drug property due to NaOH then you should know the properties of the drug you are gonna dissolve. Suppose, if the drug contains any amphoteric, d-block, f-block lanthanide or actinide elements then you should worry about the reaction might take between NaOH and the drug. DMSO is a good choice i think as answered by others above but as it is a weak acid, it may react with basic ions present in your tested drug given optimum concentration. As you mentioned that the data sheet said to dissolve in NaOH, which is a strong base, i presume that the tested drug might be of basic in nature. So, choice is yours as you know like dissolves like. So, what i suggest is you check the Ph change by using different diluents in different close ranged concentration to optimize.
But if you are worried about the toxicity of the diluent on cell culture then you must know the properties of the cell culture.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Oncology
- Cancer Research