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Updated: Mar 23, 2026
Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Based Developmental Toxicity Assays for Chemical Safety Screening and Systems Biology Data Generation
Published on: June 17, 2015
An early developmental vertebrate model for nanomaterial safety: bridging cell-based and mammalian toxicity
Carl A Webster1, Desire Di Silvio1, Aarthi Devarajan1
1School of Pharmacy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Aim:
With the rise in production of nanoparticles (NPs) for an ever-increasing number of applications, there is an urgent need to efficiently assess their potential toxicity. We propose a NP hazard assessment protocol that combines mammalian cytotoxicity data with embryonic vertebrate abnormality scoring to determine an overall toxicity index.
Results:
We observed that, after exposure to a range of NPs, Xenopus phenotypic scoring showed a strong correlation with cell based in vitro assays. Magnetite-cored NPs, negative for toxicity in vitro and Xenopus, were further confirmed as nontoxic in mice.
Conclusion:
The results highlight the potential of Xenopus embryo analysis as a fast screening approach for toxicity assessment of NPs, which could be introduced for the routine testing of nanomaterials.
