There has been a dramatic increase in the development and use of in vitro systems in all types of biological disciplines but particularly in pharmacology and toxicology. Explant cultures, primary cells and cell lines have been generated for practically many target cell types. There has also been a focus to the development of cells of human origin and techniques such as telomerase over expression have shown great promise. Recently, human pluriopotent stem cells have been the subject of increasing scientific interest as they can potentially differentiate into any desired target cell and can be easily collected from specific individuals. Therefore, stem cells are likely to become an important new tool for developing unique, in vitro model systems for toxicology. In parallel there has been major developments in cell culture techniques and medium development. The use in vitro methods for the drug safety assessment has the potential to radically improve prediction of human toxicity. These biological systems coupled with powerful high content information rich techniques such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics is pushing back the boundaries and allowing a true mechanistic understanding of molecular events.
This book aims to cover the most current advances in in vitro techniques. The first part of the book addresses the biological systems themselves. The intention is to provide the reader with the most up to date information on the status of in vitro systems (models, methods and mechanistic endpoints) specific for the various organs, explain limitations and demonstrate advantages. The second part of the book covers the issues related to the promising new approaches, biomarkers, toxicokinetics, in vitro metabolism, in silico modeling including the aspects relevant for regulatory toxicology. This book will be of equal benefit to toxicologists and pharmacologists, working in basic research or for regulatory purposes.JRC.I.5-Systems Toxicolog
