SIC50: Determining drug inhibitory concentrations using a vision transformer and an optimized Sobel operator.

Wang, Yongheng; Zhang, Weidi; Yip, Hoyin; Qu, Chuyuan; Hu, Hongru; Chen, Xiaotie; Lee, Teresa; Yang, Xi et al. · Patterns (N Y) · 2023

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

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).