Assessing the Toxic Potential of New Entities: The Role of Cytotoxicity Assays
Yüksel Çetin · Biochemistry · 2025
Conducting cytotoxicity assays is crucial to assess the efficacy and safety of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, nanoparticles, biological agents, biomaterials, and medical devices on living cells. These assays contribute to safety profiles in various fields like pharmacology, toxicology, drug development, and environmental science by evaluating the potential risks or therapeutic benefits of different compounds. In vitro, cytotoxicity testing for preliminary screening of novel drugs and vaccine candidates, medical devices, bioactive compounds, waste hazard identification, the toxicity of food contaminants and residues, etc., has a vital importance in the way of its convenience, cost-effectiveness, practicality, power, and sufficiently sensitiveness enough for application in high-throughput screening and predictive means of characterizing the toxic potential of new entities. To obtain useful results that might be very critical for further investigation, selected tools for cytotoxicity testing, such as in vitro cell culture systems originated from the target, seeding cell density, dissolving solution for samples, tested dose ranges, exposure time and conditions, etc., have an essential role; therefore, each parameter should be applied considering natural exposure scenarios. Cytotoxicity assays can provide insights into the mechanisms of cell death or damage. Understanding these mechanisms can help predict potential side effects and guide modifications to improve safety.