CNS toxicity accounts for a significant (~20%) component of drug attrition during clinical development. The number of failures at this late stage is unacceptably high and robust human-relevant models are needed to identify and eliminate this potential toxic liability earlier in drug discovery.
In the American College of Toxicology (ACT) Talking Tox webinar series, our expert Dr Chris Strock discusses the different in vitro neurotoxicity models currently available including their ability to predict CNS liability and their application in a drug discovery setting.
The webinar covers a comparison of the following assays:
- Neurite outgrowth and 2D neurotoxicity assessment
- 3D brain co-cultured microtissues for chronic dosing studies
- Sensitive microelectrode array (MEA) analysis
At the end of the webinar, an insight into the future outlook of neurotoxicity assessment is presented. One area of growing interest is the use of transcriptomics to detect and understand sensitive drug-induced effects on the mRNA in the cells. This highly informative technique not only provides an assessment of risk but also helps understand and identify the specific mechanism of toxicity based on comparison of signatures for known toxic compounds.