Accepted_test

Cell proliferation monitoring is advantageous for a plethora of scientific fields including cancer research, drug development and tissue engineering. By now, there is a need for a method to trace cell growth and division that is (i) cost-effective, (ii) intuitive, (iii) non-invasive, (iv) label-free, and (v) dynamic.

Here we present a novel optical instrument capable of measuring light scattering changes occuring due to cell culture proliferation. The approach works well for both suspension and adherent cell lines. Importantly, there is no need of using special culture dishes, as all the measurements are performed in a non-invasive manner in a standard T25 flask. Several cell lines of various adhesion level were used to validate the device and estimate the accuracy and reproducibility of the measurements. 

 This work presents an extension of our previous approach applicable to cells in suspension only. Two measurement schemes for adherent cell monitoring were proposed. The first one is based on the scattering of the laser beam that propagates close to the flask bottom while the second one utilises the total-internal-reflection phenomenon hypothesized to differentiate between the cells of different adhesion level. The possibility of using total-internal-reflection phenomenon is currently being investigated and the results will be presented at the conference.

We believe that our approach can contribute to the development of novel research technologies and may open promising scientific avenues.