The Cytotoxicity of Some Organic Solvents in Common Use on Human Tumor Cell Lines

Organ solvents are used to dissolve some compounds which have bad water-solubility in screening antitumor agents.It is neccessary to provide some organt solvents with low cytotoxic and good solubity at adaptive concentration.To test the effect of eight organt solvents in common use on two human tumor cell lines by improved MTT method.The IC 50 of methanol,anhydride,ethanol,glycol,dimethylsulfoxide,acetone,chlorform and n-butyl alcohol on A549(human lune cancer) are 3.5, 0.61, 2.09×10 -2, 3.79×10 -2, 4.07×10 -3,2.10×10 -2,4.04×10 -3,2.62×10 -4?μg/mL,respectively;and the IC 50 of methanol,anhydride,glycol,dimethylsulfoxide,acetone,chlorform and n-butyl alcohol in BeL-7402(human liver cancer) are 0.28,0.89,5.82×10 -2,9.67×10 -3,5.54×10 -2,8.00×10 -3,1.61×10 -3?μg/mL,separatively.Methanol and anhydride are good selection which have very weak cytotoxicity between the concentration of 0.1%-10%;As for ethanol and glycoL,the good selection is below the concentration of 3%;DMSO is used in the concentration below 1%;The most suitable concentration for acetone and chlorform is below 0.3%;The cytotoxity of n-butyl alcohol is very potent and it is not fit for antitumor agents in vitro screening.