Colony Forming Cell (CFC) Assays & Toxicity
MDS offers colony forming cell (CFC) assays as an in vitro method to measure the toxicity in drug development and to determine dosage strategies. Synergistic or antagonist interactions between multiple compounds can be elucidated and comparisons can be made to similar marketed compounds.
Chemotherapeutic compounds and/or small molecule compounds targeted for the treatment of non-hematological malignancies may suppress either myeloid or erythroid progenitor proliferation. At MDS, our scientists will design and perform specific protocols for monitoring the effects of your potential drug candidate or herbal substance on both human and mouse hematopoietic progenitor cells. Testing is generally performed on five concentrations of each drug, monitoring the percent growth of erythroid (CFU-E and BFU-E) and/or myeloid (CFU-GM) colonies.
Colony forming cell assays use primary cells making them more reliable and informative than assays using cell lines. They involve the culture of progenitor cells for 1-2 weeks to allow for their proliferation into colonies, allowing insight into the kinetics of growth and making them a more sensitive assay than those that only measure cell death. In addition, multiple progenitor cell types can be cultured allowing the detection of lineage specificity and identification of specific target populations. Cells from different species may be used.
Animal cells can be used before in vivo studies to refine doses and reduce the number of animals required for preclinical toxicology.
Human cells can be used to determine accuracy of extrapolating human data from an animal model. As such, our clients can reduce the uncertainty of the starting dose in phase I clinical trials and treat fewer patients with ineffective doses.
There are various kinds of colony-forming units:
- Colony-forming unit lymphocyte (CFU-L)
- Colony-forming unit erythrocyte (CFU-E)
- Colony-forming unit granulo-monocyte (CFU-GM)
- Colony-forming unit megakaryocyte (CFU-Me)
- Colony-forming unit basophil (CFU-B)
- Colony-forming unit eosinophil (CFU-Eo)