A rapid and sensitive fluorometric microassay for determining cell mediated cytotoxicity to adherent growing cell lines.

In order to measure cell mediated cytotoxicity to adherent growing cell lines in vitro more rapidly and conveniently, a fluorometric microassay was developed and results were compared with those obtained by the 51Cr release assay. The fluorometric method is based on the hydrolysis of the fluorochrome 4-methylumbelliferyl heptanoate (MUH) by intracellular esterases of viable cells. Melanoma cell monolayers were incubated with lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells for 4 h at various effector: target (E:T) cell ratios (E:T = 16, 8, 4, 2:1). Thereafter surviving adherent melanoma cells were stained with MUH for 30 min and fluorescence was measured directly in a 96 well plate reader. For the calculation of LAK cell cytotoxicity fluorescence values were corrected for the number of nonspecifically detached tumor cells during the washes and the number of nonspecifically adherent LAK cells. Using identical target and effector cell preparations both assays showed a nearly proportional increase of percentage cytotoxicity with rising numbers of lymphocytes. Compared with the 51Cr release assay, however, higher cytotoxicity values were obtained with the fluorometric MUH microassay: 57% with MUH versus 26% with 51Cr and 39% versus 14% for cell lines StML-11 and SKMel-28, respectively (E:T ratio = 16:1). The higher cytotoxicity rates obtained with the fluorometric MUH microassay were not due to the additional 30 min staining with MUH or due to nonspecific hydrolysis of MUH by extracellular esterases released from damaged cells, as could be shown by a series of experiments. In conclusion, a simple and rapid fluorometric microassay has been developed showing reliable reproducibility and a higher sensitivity compared with the 51Cr release assay for the determination of cellular cytotoxicity to adherent growing cell lines, avoiding hazardous radioactive labels.