Cell Transformation Assay (Cell Recovery Compatible)

Product details

Neoplastic transformation occurs via a series of genetic and epigenetic alterations that yield a cell population that is capable of proliferating independently of both external and internal signals that normally restrain growth. For example, transformed cells show reduced requirements for extracellular growth promoting factors, are not restricted by cell-cell contact, and are often immortal. Anchorage-independent growth is one of the hallmarks of transformation, which is considered the most accurate and stringent in vitro assay for detecting malignant transformation of cells.

Traditionally, the soft agar colony formation assay is a common method to monitor anchorage-independent growth, which measures proliferation in a semisolid culture media after 3-4 weeks by manual counting of colonies. Standard soft agar assays are usually performed in 100-mm or 60 mm dishes, where cells are allowed to grow inside a semi-solid culture media for 3-4 weeks before sizable colonies appear. This method is quite cumbersome, time-consuming, and difficult when testing a large number of samples. Additionally, the manual counting of colonies is highly subjective; with varying colony sizes, it’s difficult to determine meaningful results.

ab325582 Cell Transformation Assay (Cell Recovery Compatible) kit does not involve subjective manual counting of colonies or require a 3–4-week incubation period. Instead, cells are incubated only 6-8 days in a proprietary semi-solid agar media before being solubilized, transferred and detected by the provided MTT Solution in a microtiter plate reader. Alternatively, viable transformed cells can be easily recovered for further culturing and testing, such as in protein/DNA array analysis and cancer vaccine development. This format provides a quantitative, high-throughput method to accurately measure cell transformation, while the short incubation time (6-8 days) makes it possible to assay cells transiently transfected with oncogenes or siRNA.