Mitochondrial toxicity – simple intracellular assay to test oxygen consumption

Mitochondria are one of the main places in cells where energy is produced via aerobic respiration.

Dr EJ Dell Dr EJ Dell (10)

Mitochondrial toxicity can occur when drugs or diseases affect the mitochondria and prevent the proper production of energy via oxygen consumption. Therefore a method is needed to test mitochondrial function and toxicity, especially when trying to design potential new drugs.

One way to measure mitochondrial function is to measure oxygen consumption, but traditional methods are limited by low throughput, by using specialized equipment, and by measuring only extracellular oxygen.

The MitoXpress®-Xtra assay from Agilent overcomes these limitations by providing a phosphorescent-based method that can measure intracellular oxygen consumption using the time-resolved detection found in many multi-mode microplate readers. When used with the Atmospheric Control Unit (ACU) on the FLUOstar Omega, VANTAstarTM, and CLARIOstar Plus® a real-time monitoring system can be created that measures the change in intracellular oxygen in a cell monolayer (see AN223: Real-time monitoring of intracellular oxygen using MitoXpress-Intra).

Find out more about the MitoXpress®-Xtra assay on our website.

Fig. 1: Time resolved detection of MitoXpress®-Xtra using two time windows.

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