High-throughput in vitro hemotoxicity testing and in vitro cross-platform comparative toxicity

For decades, hemotoxicity has been considered as simply changes in peripheral blood parameters or morphological changes observed in the bone marrow as a result of drug administration. The effects are actually the result of the drug acting at a much earlier level in the blood-forming system, usually at the level of the lympho-hematopoietic stem cell or its immediate differentiating progeny. To detect these early cellular responses, highly sensitive, non-subjective and fully standardized in vitro high-throughput testing platforms have been developed that detect changes in intracellular ATP concentrations which are directly proportional to and predict the proliferative/cytotoxic response of different cell populations.