- Wang, Yongheng;
- Zhang, Weidi;
- Yip, Hoyin;
- Qu, Chuyuan;
- Hu, Hongru;
- Chen, Xiaotie;
- Lee, Teresa;
- Yang, Xi;
- Yang, Bingjun;
- Kumar, Priyadarsini;
- Lee, Su Yeon;
- Casimiro, Javier J;
- Zhang, Jiawei;
- Wang, Aijun;
- Lam, Kit S
As a measure of cytotoxic potency, half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) is the concentration at which a drug exerts half of its maximal inhibitory effect against target cells. It can be determined by various methods that require applying additional reagents or lysing the cells. Here, we describe a label-free Sobel-edge-based method, which we name SIC50, for the evaluation of IC50. SIC50 classifies preprocessed phase-contrast images with a state-of-the-art vision transformer and allows for the continuous assessment of IC50 in a faster and more cost-efficient manner. We have validated this method using four drugs and 1,536-well plates and also built a web application. We anticipate that this method will assist in the high-throughput screening of chemical libraries (e.g., small-molecule drugs, small interfering RNA [siRNA], and microRNA and drug discovery).