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Developmental toxicity testing in the 21st century: the sword of Damocles shattered by embryonic stem cell assays?

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Abstract

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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Product Safety and Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (ZEBET), German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Thielallee 88-92, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Andreas Luch

  2. Department of Experimental Toxicology and Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (ZEBET), German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Thielallee 88-92, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Andrea Seiler, Michael Oelgeschläger, Manfred Liebsch & Christian Riebeling

  3. Department of Product Safety, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Thielallee 88-92, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Ralph Pirow & Tewes Tralau

Authors
  1. Andrea Seiler
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  2. Michael Oelgeschläger
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  3. Manfred Liebsch
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  4. Ralph Pirow
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  5. Christian Riebeling
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  6. Tewes Tralau
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  7. Andreas Luch
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Correspondence to Andreas Luch.

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Andrea Seiler, Michael Oelgeschläger, Manfred Liebsch, Ralph Pirow, Christian Riebeling, Tewes Tralau and Andreas Luch contributed equally to the manuscript.

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Seiler, A., Oelgeschläger, M., Liebsch, M. et al. Developmental toxicity testing in the 21st century: the sword of Damocles shattered by embryonic stem cell assays?. Arch Toxicol 85, 1361–1372 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-011-0767-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-011-0767-1

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