As you know there are many ways to do cytotoxicity assays, however we believe that using HCS tool is a suitable for your study. HCS allow you to quantify the key biological indicators of cellular functions (including cell population density, cell membrane permeability, lysosomal mass/pH, nuclear morphology, etc). If you need further help to do this kind of analysis, you are more than well come.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19206490

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21801388

If you are not setting up assays for high content screening and to test a small number of compounds, I would suggest using the LDH assay or a MTS assay. The MTS assay essentially mesures cell proliferation and is a very straightforward assay (search for Cell96 non-radioactive assay on the Promega website). Assay can be performed in a 96 well format. The LDH assay measures LDH released into culture medium as a marker of cel death. Total cell death can be measured by lysing cells in triton x100 to give 100% cell death, again this is a relatively straight foward assay that I have used in a 96 well format. For primary neuronal cultures I usually seed at 50,000 cells per well in a 96 well plate.

Thank you very much for your answers. These comments are helpful for our research.

Thanks once again.