Emerging exposures of developmental toxicants

Emerging exposures of developmental toxicants.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The purpose of this review is to identify emerging developmental toxicants that are understudied in children's health. Exposures may arise from new products designed to improve utility, to reduce toxicity, or to replace undesirable chemicals. Exposures to less-toxic chemicals may also be significant if they are very commonly used, thereby generating widespread exposure. Source...

Expression classifiers for developmental toxicants

In its recent edition the Archives of Toxicology have published a transcriptome-based classifier that identifies developmental toxicants acting as histone deacetylase inhib-itors. The authors, Eugen Rempel and colleagues from Dortmund Technical University , demonstrate that based on only eight genes the gene expression pattern of developmental toxicants acting as histone deacety-lase inhibitors...

Pollutants as developmental toxicants in aquatic organisms.

Pollutants, by disrupting metabolic processes, can interfere with development, and, at critical periods of development, can act as teratogens. Such interference with normal development can be used as a bioassay. Some screening tests are based on this phenomenon. As teratogens, pollutants are fairly nonspecific. Many different classes may elicit the same developmental responses. Mechanisms of te...

Environmental toxicants: human exposures and their health effects

Assessment of Developmental Toxicants using Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Embryonic stem (ES) cells have potential for use in evaluation of developmental toxicity because they are generated in large numbers and differentiate into three germ layers following formation of embryoid bodies (EBs). In earlier study, embryonic stem cell test (EST) was established for assessment of the embryotoxic potential of compounds. Using EBs indicating the onset of differentiation of m...