A Set on edgi
How Scientists Test What Kills Cells
Before a cancer drug reaches a patient, it has already killed cells in a dish, and someone counted exactly how many.
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Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is a systemic cancer treatment that uses drugs to disrupt cell division and trigger cell death.
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Cytotoxicity
Cytotoxicity is the ability of a substance to damage or kill living cells.
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Cell Culture
Cell culture is the process of growing living cells outside their natural organism inside controlled laboratory vessels.
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Assay
An assay is a laboratory test that detects or measures a specific target substance, called an analyte, in a sample.
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Necrosis
Necrosis is the premature, violent death of cells from trauma or infection.
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Lactate dehydrogenase
Lactate dehydrogenase is an enzyme found in almost all living cells that converts pyruvate into lactate and back again.
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Dose–response relationship
A dose–response relationship is the pattern showing how a living system reacts to different amounts of a substance or stressor over time.
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IC50
IC50 measures how much of a drug is needed to inhibit a biological target by 50 percent, acting as a core metric for inhibitor potency.
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Therapeutic Window
The therapeutic window is the specific range of drug doses that effectively treats an illness without causing dangerous toxic side effects.