Stem cells: Stem cells in toxicology

Continuous exposure to environmental toxicants or xenobiotics can lead to health effects. A few of those health effects are well understood, but most chemico-biological interactions are not well understood. Until now, methods for investigating chemico-biological interactions have depended highly on laboratory animals and immortalized cell lines. However, most of the time, the use of genetically modified laboratory animals and immortalized cell lines are showy and unsuccessful, respectively, and it fails to recapitulate human physiology in toto. More convenient, convincible, and cost-effective system is most desirable to assess chemico-biological interaction to protect human health against environmental toxicants or xenobiotics. As a novel system, Stem cells offer broad scope to screen natural pollutants and xenobiotics conveniently and convincingly. In addition, stem cells can be used for organ-specific toxicity assay. More recently, stem cell-based organoid platforms provided a more robust 3D organ microenvironment, mimicking real human organs very closely and reducing the usage of costly animal models. Hence, adopting stem cells and stem cell-based technologies for toxicological study is the right direction for future human-environmental pollutant interaction assessments.