Proposal to improve vertebrate cell cultures to establish them as substitutes for the regulatory testing of chemicals and effluents using fish

Primary cultured cells as sensitive in vitro model for assessment of toxicants-comparison to hepatocytes and gill epithelia

“…Recently, Schirmer (2006) proposed that a single culture has a limited number of target sites in comparison to a whole organism, and alone is not able to represent the diversity in the target tissue in whole fish. Higher concentrations of chemicals are required in the cell culture than in the fish to detect a toxic response.…”

“…Cells are a key level of organization for understanding mechanisms of toxicity. In coping with the new approach to risk assessment for regulatory tests and satisfying the social desire to reduce or replace the use of animals in testing (Castaño et al, 2003; for a review see Schirmer, 2006), as alternative models, cultured cells are applied in mechanistic studies and toxicity identification in ecotoxicology. Hence, ous.…”

“…Primary cultured hepatocytes maintain most of their original differentiated in vivo characteristics, and therefore facilitate the extrapolation of the results in vivo. Fish hepatocytes have been extensively used for ecotoxicological exposure assessment studies (Pesonen and Andersson, 1997;Segner, 1998;Sturm et al, 2001;Navas and Segner, 2000;Smeets et al, 2002;Kuiper et al, 2004; for a review, see Schirmer, 2006). Fish gills are continuously exposed to waterborne toxicants, comprise the first barrier against toxicants that are entering the fish body, and hence are a major organ for the uptake and depuration of many toxicants (Wood, 2001), including organic chemicals (McKim et al, 1985;Randall et al, 1998).…”

Cytotoxic Effects of Imidazolium Ionic Liquids on Fish and Human Cell Lines

“…Investigations of the effects of ionic liquids on the aquatic environment have mostly been based on the evaluation of the growth and survival of different aquatic organisms (11)(12). Even though fi sh cell lines are becoming the most important in vitro tool in aquatic ecotoxicology (13), investigations of ionic liquid cytotoxicity in continuous fi sh cell lines have not been reported yet.…”

Multidrug Resistance-Associated Protein 3 (Mrp3/Abcc3/Moat-D) Is Expressed in the SAE Squalus acanthias Shark Embryo–Derived Cell Line

“…At the same time, fish cell lines are finding increased use as substitutes or initial tools in the study of various areas of marine toxicology. 16 Cell culture approaches allow reliable control of the extracellular environment and provide an opportunity to study a number of transport phenomena at the cellular and subcellular levels. 14 These include approaches to the study of mechanisms by which environmental effectors, xenobiotics, drugs, and their metabolites influence substrate specificity and kinetics of transport or cellular expression of transport proteins at the transcriptional, posttranscriptional, translational, and posttranslational stages.…”