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Concept
IC50
Summary
DISPLAYTITLE:IC50
Half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) is a measure of the potency of a substance in inhibiting a specific biological or biochemical function. IC50 is a quantitative measure that indicates how much of a particular inhibitory substance (e.g. drug) is needed to inhibit, in vitro, a given biological process or biological component by 50%. The biological component could be an enzyme, cell, cell receptor or microorganism. IC50 values are typically expressed as molar concentration.
IC50 is commonly used as a measure of antagonist drug potency in pharmacological research. IC50 is comparable to other measures of potency, such as EC50 for excitatory drugs. EC50 represents the dose or plasma concentration required for obtaining 50% of a maximum effect in vivo.
IC50 can be determined with functional assays or with competition binding assays.
Sometimes, IC50 values are converted to the pIC50 scale.
Due to the minus sign, higher values of pIC50 indicate exponentially more potent inhibitors. pIC50 is usually given in terms of molar concentration (mol/L, or M), thus requiring IC50 in units of M.
The IC50 terminology is also used for some behavioral measures in vivo, such as the two bottle fluid consumption test. When animals decrease consumption from the drug-laced water bottle, the concentration of the drug that results in a 50% decrease in consumption is considered the IC50 for fluid consumption of that drug.
The IC50 of a drug can be determined by constructing a dose-response curve and examining the effect of different concentrations of antagonist on reversing agonist activity. IC50 values can be calculated for a given antagonist by determining the concentration needed to inhibit half of the maximum biological response of the agonist. IC50 values can be used to compare the potency of two antagonists.
IC50 values are very dependent on conditions under which they are measured. In general, a higher concentration of inhibitor leads to lowered agonist activity. IC50 value increases as agonist concentration increases.
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