Department of Experimental Toxicology and Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Thielallee 88-92, Berlin, Germany.
Arch Toxicol. 2011 Nov;85(11):1361-72. doi: 10.1007/s00204-011-0767-1. Epub 2011 Oct 19.
Modern society faces an inherent dilemma. In our globalized society, we are spoilt for choice by an ever-increasing number of products, many of which are made of new materials and compound mixtures. At the same time, as consumers we got accustomed to the idea of a life minimized for risk, including our own exposure to chemicals from the environment or to compounds present in and released from everyday products. Chemical safety testing bridges these obviously diverging interests, and the corresponding legislation has hence been tremendously extended (e.g., introduction of the European legislation REACH in 2007). However, the underlying regulatory toxicology still relies mainly on animal testing, which is relatively slow, expensive, and ethically arguable. Meanwhile, recent years have seen a surge in efforts to develop alternative testing systems and strategies. Expectations are particularly high for the applicability of stem cells as test systems especially for developmental toxicity testing in vitro. For the first time in history, test systems can be based on differentiating cells and tissue progenitors in culture, thus bringing the 'vision of toxicity testing in the 21st century' a step closer.
现代社会面临着一个内在的困境。在我们的全球化社会中，我们可以选择的产品越来越多，其中许多产品都是由新材料和复合混合物制成的。同时，作为消费者，我们已经习惯了将风险最小化的生活理念，包括我们自己接触环境中的化学物质或接触日常用品中存在并释放的化合物。化学安全测试弥合了这些明显不同的利益，相应的立法也因此得到了极大的扩展（例如，2007 年引入了欧洲法规 REACH）。然而，基础监管毒理学仍然主要依赖于动物测试，这种测试相对较慢、昂贵且在伦理上存在争议。与此同时，近年来，开发替代测试系统和策略的努力激增。人们对干细胞作为测试系统的适用性寄予厚望，特别是对体外发育毒性测试。这是历史上第一次，测试系统可以基于培养中的分化细胞和组织祖细胞，从而使“21 世纪毒性测试的愿景”更进了一步。
