I am attempting to evaluate effects of a kind of chemical drug on proliferation apoptosis and gene expression changes in glioblastoma cells, but I don't know whether put my cell lines in starving (less percent of serum) condition or in logarithmic phase of growth prior to treatment? Which condition is most recommended for better assessment of drug effect?
Dear Azin,
I advice normal serum condition and cells in log phase while "insulting" them with your compound.
Be aware that if you are using colorimetric assays like the MTT or the MTS ones you can encounter false-positive or false-negative data (see the four "Technical problem ..." articles here attached).
Be aware that the choice of the origin of the serum can modify your data (see the attached article).
Be also aware of the fact that GBM cells are markedly resistant to pro-apoptotic stimuli (see Lefranc et al.) and that temozolomide, which is not a conventional pro-apoptotic agent, is the sole chemotherapeutic that contribute actual clinical benefits to GBM patint (see Stupp et al.,).
Lastly, one GBM cell line does not recapitulate the biological behavior of other GBM cell lines (see Belot et al. and Bruyère et al.).
Best regards
Robert
Dear Dr Robert, the articles you sent were really helpful, thank you so much.
Best regards
Hi Azin
I would also prefer to treat the cells in usual cell culture conditions. Serum starvation itself is known to induce several pathways (p38, JNK and ERK) in cells and that might interfere with the outcome of your experiments. In case you are testing Inhibitors of these pathways that you need to serum starve them to induce phosphorylation.
Thanks
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