SdFFF monitoring of cellular apoptosis induction by diosgenin and different inducers in the human 1547 osteosarcoma cell line

Apoptosis is one of the most important phenomena of cellular biology. Sedimentation field flow fractionation (SdFFF) has been described as an effective tool for cell separation, respecting integrity and viability. Because SdFFF takes advantage of intrinsic properties of eluted cells (size, density, shape or rigidity), we investigated the capacity of SdFFF in monitoring the early and specific biophysical modifications which occurred during cellular apoptosis induction. Then, we used, as an in vitro cellular apoptosis model, the association between human 1547 osteosarcoma cells and diosgenin, a plant steroid known to induce apoptosis. Four other molecules were studied: hecogenin, tigogenin, staurosporine and MG132. Our results demonstrated a correlation between SdFFF elution profile changes (peak shape modification and retention ratio evolution) and effective apoptosis induction. For the first time, we demonstrated that SdFFF could be used to monitor apoptosis induction as early as 6 h incubation, suggesting different applications such as screening series of molecules to evaluate their ability to induce apoptosis, or sorting apoptotic cells to study apoptosis pathway.