A New Method for Measuring Viability of Deformed Cells

A new experimental procedure has been developed to measure the viability of isolated cells deformed by two parallel plates which simulate ice crystals under freezing of biological material. The viability of deformed cell is evaluated in situ with trypan blue dye exclusion assay. The change in the viability with the gap size between two plates is obtained for the prostate cancer cell line ND-1 (20μm in the mean diameter) at about 23℃. The viability decreases steeply with decreasing the gap size at about 6μm that is 30% of original cell diameter andabout 50% of cells are destroyed. If uniform expansion of cell membrane is assumed, this critical expansion corresponds to the 50% increase in the surface area