Toxicity testing with animals has limitations with regards to cost, time, reliability, and animalwelfare. We propose to develop a novel toxicological screening approach in a single animal formatfor quickly assessing the safety of chemicals with reduction of animal use and improved animalwelfare. We will develop a new testing procedure with which we could perform tests in only oneanimal to obtain information on the effective doses, impacted tissues, and organs, andtoxicodynamics of toxicants, which usually need experimenting on hundreds of animals, monthsto years efforts, and enormous biochemical and pathological analyses in the traditionaltoxicological study. The breakthrough technique is a reporter system for real-time mapping cellulardamage caused by chemical substances in the whole body. It can detect the toxic effects ofsubstances as early as cellular damage occurs in the body. Whereas in traditional animal testing,adverse effects only become detectable/measurable in animals exhibiting significant degrees ofadverse health effects after receiving high doses of test chemicals. Instead of taking the animalbody as a "black box" in the traditional testing, our new technique enables real-time monitoringresponses to a chemical by making the animal body transparent for directly observing adverseeffects at the cellular level.
Public Health Relevance Statement: Public Health Relevance
The success of the project would bring us a new toxicological screening approach that allows fast,
cost-effective toxicity testing in a single animal that helps to significantly reduce the number of
animals being used and improve animal welfare. More importantly, our definition of toxicity by
damage at the cellular level may be more meaningful for safety prediction in humans than LD50
or other traditional toxicological parameters obtained from illnesses exaggerated in animals with
high-dose.
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