FAST CELL COUNTING - THE BETTER CELL COUNTING?

A better understanding of environmental factors influencing human health will benefit from the availability of fast and reliable methods allowing the quasi simultaneous measurement of a panel of endpoints in cell exposure studies. Automated cell-counting methods are basic for this purpose if comparability with traditional manual cell counting procedure is documented. In the present paper, both dead and viable cells of human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (A549) and human bronchial epithelial cell line (16HBE 14o-) at various cell densities ranging from 50 000 to 400 000 cells/ml, are counted by both Trypan blue dye exclusion staining counted with a hemo-cytometer and a handheld automated cell counter based on the Coulter principle (Scepter 2.0, Millipore). Correlation indexes higher than 0.998 have been obtained using both cell counting protocols in all cases, thus confirming the reliable use of automated cell counters whenever fast, easy to use, precise cell counting is a requisite.