{"title":"Pitfalls and other issues with the MTT assay.","authors":"David Kessel","doi":"10.1016/j.pdpdt.2025.104700","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While the colorimetric assay commonly referred to as 'MTT' does provide an indication of effects of photodamage on mitochondrial enzyme levels, a careful analysis showed that the resulting data were not correlated with a clonogenic assay. While MTT data can be claimed to represent 'cytotoxicity', this is an undefined term and appears not to be necessarily correlated with the object of anti-tumor therapy: tumor eradication. Use of this assay for assessing effects of treatment on viability are therefore unreliable.</p>","PeriodicalId":94170,"journal":{"name":"Photodiagnosis and photodynamic therapy","volume":" ","pages":"104700"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Photodiagnosis and photodynamic therapy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdpdt.2025.104700","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
While the colorimetric assay commonly referred to as 'MTT' does provide an indication of effects of photodamage on mitochondrial enzyme levels, a careful analysis showed that the resulting data were not correlated with a clonogenic assay. While MTT data can be claimed to represent 'cytotoxicity', this is an undefined term and appears not to be necessarily correlated with the object of anti-tumor therapy: tumor eradication. Use of this assay for assessing effects of treatment on viability are therefore unreliable.