Neurotoxicity animal testing option

2010-01-26
Newsfeed

German scientists have developed an alternative to animal testing for the rapid screening and identification of chemicals that could be a threat to the human nervous system.

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German scientists have developed an alternative to animal testing for the rapid screening and identification of chemicals that could be a threat to the human nervous system.

With the introduction of the EU's Reach (Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) legislation, neurotoxicity laboratories across the world face the challenge of screening an increasing number of chemicals to identify those that pose a risk to human health.

Such tests are usually conducted on animals, but rising costs have increased the urgency to develop an in vitro assay.

A lack of comparable read-outs between in vivo and in vitro systems can be problematic, according to Jonathan West at the University of Dortmund, Germany.

However, West said the problem could be solved using a neural network.

West's team created a new testing platform – a network formation assay (NFA) – which monitors connections between specifically placed neurons and their neighbours.

These connections simulate the neural system of memory and learning, and any disturbance in them is a clinical sign of neurotoxicity.

"Because NFA examines neuron connections it represents an in vitro model that is comparable to the in vivo state", West said.

The assay takes only three hours, compared with up to 200 hours for manual testing.

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