Current Strategies in Assessment of Nanotoxicity: Alternatives to In Vivo Animal Testing.
Int J Mol Sci
; 22(8)2021 Apr 19.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33921715
ABSTRACT
Millions of experimental animals are widely used in the assessment of toxicological or biological effects of manufactured nanomaterials in medical technology. However, the animal consciousness has increased and become an issue for debate in recent years. Currently, the principle of the 3Rs (i.e., reduction, refinement, and replacement) is applied to ensure the more ethical application of humane animal research. In order to avoid unethical procedures, the strategy of alternatives to animal testing has been employed to overcome the drawbacks of animal experiments. This article provides current alternative strategies to replace or reduce the use of experimental animals in the assessment of nanotoxicity. The currently available alternative methods include in vitro and in silico approaches, which can be used as cost-effective approaches to meet the principle of the 3Rs. These methods are regarded as non-animal approaches and have been implemented in many countries for scientific purposes. The in vitro experiments related to nanotoxicity assays involve cell culture testing and tissue engineering, while the in silico methods refer to prediction using molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) modeling. The commonly used novel cell-based methods and computational approaches have the potential to help minimize the use of experimental animals for nanomaterial toxicity assessments.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Animal Experimentation
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Aspects:
Ethics
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Int J Mol Sci
Year:
2021
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Taiwan