CCK-8 is a widely used reagent for cell proliferation and cytotoxicity testing based on WST-8. Its advantages include high sensitivity, reliable data, and simple operation. It can be used for cell proliferation assays, cytotoxicity detection, cell viability testing, drug screening, and cell growth inhibition detection.

Cell proliferation assays constitute a classic category of experiments within the field of oncology. In addition to the widely used CCK-8 assay, other methods include MTT, direct cell counting, and fluorescence probe-based assays. A comparison of the underlying principles and applicable scopes of these various detection methods is presented below.

Due to its advantages-including high sensitivity, reliable detection, and ease of operation-CCK-8 has become one of the most classic and widely used detection methods.

CCK-8 experimental results are typically presented in the literature as line graphs, although some are shown as bar charts. For CCK-8 results related to compound library drug screening, literature sometimes presents them in the form of heat maps.

In October 2025, Zhongyuan Wang et al. published an article titled "Hsa_circ_0038737 promotes PARPi resistance in castration-resistant prostate cancer via IGF2BP3-mediated DNPH1 mRNA stabilization" in Mol Cancer (IF=35.9). To evaluate the effects of hsa_circ_0038737 knockdown and overexpression on the proliferation of prostate cancer cells (22RV1 and PC-3), CCK-8 cell viability assays were conducted. The results showed that silencing hsa_circ_0038737 significantly inhibited cell proliferation.

The research findings provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms of PARP inhibitor resistance and highlight targeting circRNA-RBP interactions as a potential therapeutic strategy to overcome resistance in castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Figure 1 (line chart) clearly and intuitively shows the changing trend of cell viability over time and the comparison of cells with different treatments under the same experimental conditions. It is worth mentioning that in order to explore the functional role of Hsa_circ_0038737 in the proliferation of prostate cancer cells, the author first detected cell phenotype changes through CCK-8 cell viability assay and colony formation experiment. To further elucidate its potential mechanism, cell cycle analysis was performed by flow cytometry. Please pay attention to the experimental design ideas and logic, as well as the display of experimental results.

A study titled "Bioprinting of live platelet-loaded nerve conduit using energy-dissipative hydrogel" was published in the November 2025 issue of *Bioact Mater* (IF=20.5). The research demonstrates that the Pluronic F127 diacrylate (F127DA) hydrogel can effectively protect platelets from activation through its unique energy-dissipative nanostructure. This work will contribute to the design of novel conduits for the effective repair of peripheral nerves.

The article studied the cell compatibility of the nerve guide through live/dead cell staining and CCK8 detection. The results showed no significant difference in cell survival rate between the PLT-F127DA group and the control group. Further, the scratch test was used to evaluate the effect of the conduit on HUVECs migration behavior; the Transwell migration experiment was used to evaluate the effect of the conduit on cell migration; and the RT-qPCR experiment was performed to explore the affected signaling pathways.

Distinguished from the aforementioned line chart, this type of bar chart is more conducive to annotating whether there is a significant difference between different treatment groups. Therefore, the choice of which type of display method depends on different experimental designs and the key information that needs to be highlighted. At the same time, it is worth learning from the use of multi-technology joint verification graphics, which present the results of CCK-8 and other methods (such as live-dead cell fluorescence staining) in the same chart in a side-by-side or superimposed manner, providing multidimensional evidence for cell proliferation.

There is relatively little literature showing CCK-8 experimental results using heatmaps. This type of visualization is generally suitable for large-scale drug screening or multifactorial experiments, using color intensity to intuitively display differences in cell viability among various treatment groups. An article published in *JACS Au* in April 2025, titled "Machine Learning Reveals Amine Type in Polymer Micelles Determines mRNA Binding, In Vitro, and In Vivo Performance for Lung-Selective Delivery," adopted this method to show the cell viability of HEK293T cells after transfection with a complete library of micelles.

This experiment investigated the effect of a library of cationic micelle nanoparticles (MNP) on the viability of transfected cells. The x-axis A1-A10 represents these nanoparticles with varying degrees of alkyl substitution, and the y-axis Short, Medium, and Long indicates short, medium, and long corona amphiphiles, with 5 and 10 indicating the N/P ratios for transfection. Another paper published in 2024 in Cell Chem Biol also presented the results of a drug screening experiment for epigenetic compounds inhibiting the proliferation of breast cancer cells through a heatmap.

MCE offers a wide range of reagents for cell proliferation assays; the following section introduces the relevant products mentioned in this article. For detailed information, please visit our website or consult our technical support team.