Cell Death Detection

Assessing cell viability, cytotoxic effects, and immune cell functions

Detecting cell death is fundamental to understanding disease mechanisms, evaluating therapeutic efficacy, and monitoring immune responses.  Whether you're investigating immune cell cytotoxicity, testing compound-mediated toxicity, or analyzing inflammasome activation, choosing the right detection method is critical for obtaining reproducible and meaningful data.

For fast, non-radioactive, and high-throughput screening of lytic cell death or late-stage apoptosis, InvivoGen offers LDH-Blue™, a lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity assay kit.
 

Why choose a Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release assay?

LDH is a stable cytoplasmic enzyme released during loss of plasma membrane integrity — a hallmark of necrotic, pyroptotic, or late apoptotic cell death. Measuring extracellular LDH activity provides a sensitive, quantitative, and real-time indicator of lytic cell damage.
Unlike Annexin V or caspase assays that detect early apoptosis, LDH assays are particularly suited for assessing late-stage lytic death, such as in inflammasome-driven pyroptosis, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), or pathogen-induced membrane rupture.
 

Key advantages of the LDH assay

• Non-radioactive and safe for routine lab use
• High-throughput compatibility for drug screening and immunoassays
• Broad applicability across immune cells, cancer cells, and primary cultures
• Rapid and reliable detection of lytic cell death and late-stage apoptosis

What are the Applications for an LDH release assay?

• Lytic cell death monitoring (e.g. inflammasome studies)
• Compound-mediated cytotoxicity (e.g. chemotherapy, biologics)
• Cell-mediated cytotoxicity (e.g. T cell or NK cell killing)
• Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC)
• Pathogen-induced cell death
• Genetic screening or gene editing-induced cytotoxicity

 Want to learn more about the biology of regulated cell death?

Deepen your understanding of regulated cell death pathways and find out how they relate to your assays.