Every year, the editors give an overview over the most intensively studied fields of research and the most cited articles in toxicology. Currently, apoptosis (Kamal et al. 2014; McGrath and Seng 2013; Cardinale et al. 2012, De Brucker et al. 2011), nanotoxicology (Winkler et al. 2013; Johnston et al. 2013; Bohnsack et al. 2012; Greish et al. 2012) and in vitro systems (Li 2014; Bale et al. 2014; Eichbaum et al. 2014; Tiong et al. 2014; Roggen 2014) represent particularly intensively studied topics; they have already been discussed separately (Hengstler et al. 2014; Hammad and Bolt 2014; Bolt 2014). Further cutting-edge topics are metabolism, developmental toxicity, nephrotoxicity, arsenicals, polymorphisms and mycotoxins. To give our readers an overview over the most cited articles in these fields, we summarized the key messages of articles recently published in the Archives of Toxicology (Table 1).

Table 1 Key messages of recent studies in the field of metabolism, developmental toxicity, nephrotoxicity, arsenicals and mycotoxins
Full size table