Developmental toxicity testing in the 21st century: the sword of Damocles shattered by embryonic stem cell assays?
Modern society faces an inherent dilemma. In our globalized society, we are spoilt for choice by an ever-increasing number of products, many of which are made of new materials and compound mixtures. At the same time, as consumers we got accustomed to the idea of a life minimized for risk, including our own exposure to chemicals from the environment or to compounds present in and released from everyday products. Chemical safety testing bridges these obviously diverging interests, and the corresponding legislation has hence been tremendously extended (e.g., introduction of the European legislation REACH in 2007). However, the underlying regulatory toxicology still relies mainly on animal testing, which is relatively slow, expensive, and ethically arguable. Meanwhile, recent years have seen a surge in efforts to develop alternative testing systems and strategies. Expectations are particularly high for the applicability of stem cells as test systems especially for developmental toxicity testing in vitro. For the first time in history, test systems can be based on differentiating cells and tissue progenitors in culture, thus bringing the 'vision of toxicity testing in the 21st century' a step closer.
Department of Experimental Toxicology and Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Thielallee 88-92, Berlin, Germany.
Andrea
A
Seiler
Michael
M
Oelgeschläger
Manfred
M
Liebsch
Ralph
R
Pirow
Christian
C
Riebeling
Tewes
T
Tralau
Andreas
A
Luch
D000826:Animal Testing Alternatives / Q000379:methods*; D000818:Animals; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D018570:Risk Assessment; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D014116:Toxicology / Q000639:trends*