A new imaging based rapid in vivo toxicological screening method

Abstract This proposal aims to introduce a new imaging approach for fast toxicological screening and toxicity evaluation Toxicity testing with animals has limitations with regards to cost time reliability and animal welfare However the most challenging situation is that thousands of chemicals can t be tested for safety assessment using existing testing methods Of the USEPA list of chemicals only of them have detailed safety data Together with another approximately new chemicals being introduced each year the tremendous number of chemicals with unknown safety information pose a potentially serious threat to public health In traditional animal testing adverse effects of chemicals can typically only be detected after the onset of adverse health effects disease or death in animals exposed to relatively high doses of the substance Our new imaging approach detects real time damage at the cellular level in the animals exposed to test substances Thus the adverse effects can be monitored at any time as long as cellular damage occurs It provides a rapid method for toxicological screening and it becomes possible to test substances at environmentally or biologically relevant concentrations Based on this imaging approach we can develop new methods for large scale chemical testing In this proposal we will first demonstrate the ability of the imaging system to detect and identify sites of toxicity produced by well establish toxic chemicals We will then explore the application of the imaging approach for acute toxicity testing Public Health Relevance The success of this proposal will demonstrate the utility of a new imaging method for rapidly detecting adverse effects that can be applied to toxicity testing strategies The new imaging based toxicity testing will allow continuous monitoring of real time damage with high sensitivity allowing testing of chemicals at concentrations close to the environmentally relevant exposure levels thus providing a more accurate prediction of human response It will also help to alleviate animal suffering during the tests by looking for effects soon after chemical exposure Most importantly this imaging approach would make it possible to develop methods to address the critical need for methods to test large numbers of chemicals