ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING HUMAN-CELLS FOR PHARMACOLOGICALAND TOXICOLOGICAL STUDIES

1 Marked species differences in the distribution and affinity of drug receptors, and in the patterns of biotransformation and susceptibility to the toxicity of xenobiotics, provide the impetus for using human t issues for pharmacological and toxicological studies. 2 Studies with i ntact cells facilitate the correlation of xenobiotic metabolism with c ellular indices of toxicity, which can provide the mechanistic basis f or understanding species differences in toxicity. 3 Human cells in sus pension or primary culture reflect the variability in susceptibility t o toxicity in a population. 4 The current limitation to these studies is scarcity of human material, the need for improved (cryo)preservatio n techniques for human hepatocytes/precision-cut slices and difficulti es in predicting in vivo exposure-risk relationships from in vitro dos e-response relationships,