Cancer Biology

Clonogenic assays serve as a useful tool to test whether a given cancer therapy can reduce the clonogenic survival of tumor cells. A colony is defined as a cluster of at least 50 cells that can often only be determined microscopically. A clonogenic assay is the method of choice to determine cell reproductive death after treatment with ionizing radiation, but can also be used to determine the effectiveness of other cytotoxic agents. The following protocol has been modified from a published version (Franken et al., 2006).