Cell Culture Systems and Neurotoxicity in Biomedical Science Report

This report provides an overview of cell culture systems used in biomedical science, emphasizing their role in assessing developmental and neurotoxicity. It differentiates between primary and secondary cell lines, highlighting their respective advantages and disadvantages in research. The report discusses the importance of cell cultures in vaccine, enzyme, and growth factor production, as well as their application in therapeutics. It explores the challenges of neurotoxicity research and the use of stem cell technology and in vitro methods for toxicity evaluation. The report concludes by emphasizing the ongoing research efforts to understand the effects of neurotoxins on cell cultures and develop therapeutic strategies.

Running Head: BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE
BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE
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Introduction
Cell culture systems are referred to as those in which the cell can be grown at a
controlled state outside their normal ambience. These conditions are different for different
cell lines and can be differentiated on the basis of the nutrients and gases present in the
culture media that helps in the regulation of the physic-chemical regulation.
There are mainly two different types of cell line that include the primary and the
secondary cell lines. Primary cell line is also called as finite cell lines and is obtained directly
from the tissue of an organism. On the other hand, when a secondary cell culture is given a
second passage it is called secondary cell culture.
Discussion
Cells play a critical role in the production of vaccines, enzymes or growth factors.
They have a great role in the therapeutics as well as in the study of developmental toxicity.
The primary cell line has the advantage of retaining the characters of the organism from
which it is derived (Zimmer et al. 2014). However, the drawback is that they are difficult to
maintain. The established cell cultures have the ability to grow continuously and thus is
advantageous over primary cell line.
Every year, about 8 million of the children are born along with a birth defect
worldwide. The in vivo experiments are both costly and the time-consuming, rendering it
impossible to check all commonly used compounds for the developmental toxicity, thereby
requiring the development of fast, in vitro lower-cost ways that will detect possible toxicants
that affect the development and prioritizing chemicals for the other tests (Mordwinkin et al.
2013). Thus, the researchers have developed other methods for the evaluation of the
developmental toxicity.

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In the advent of stem cell technology, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) were established
as the molecular modeling systems and the screening tools. While the ESCs are being greatly
used in research nowadays, regulatory implementation is pending for the testing of the
developmental toxicity. The study of neurotoxicity is relatively new. While it is notable for
its rapid development, its advancement has been hampered by the various factors that
complicate the evaluation of neurotoxicology (Zimmer et al. 2014). However,
neurotoxicology faces unique challenges due to several characteristics that make the nervous
system especially vulnerable to chemical damage.
The nervous system displays a greater degree of complexity of cells, structures, and
chemicals than other organ systems. The toxic chemicals can potentially affect any of the
nervous system's functional or structural components it can impair sensory and motor
functions, disrupt the memory processes, and causes behavioral and neurological disorders.
Neurotoxic chemicals use complex molecular interactions with biological targets to exert
their effects. The affected molecule is well known for a few toxicants, and a biochemical test
can be used to examine the possible toxicity of other compounds in the same class (Singh et
al. 2015).
In vitro methods study has given a great deal of fundamental value information in
making the in vivo nervous system, and the in vitro research has sometimes been invaluable
in guiding neurotoxicological research in vivo. The physiologically stimulating acts of certain
amino acids for instance, glutamate and aspartate on the neurons might become toxic, and
amino acid analogs such as kainate or quisqualate can cause brain lesions (Krug et al. 2013).
A wide range of the tissue-culture systems are available to assess the environmental
agents ' neurological effects. Although these devices are not commonly used to identify
threats, they can be used to describe the effects of chemicals. From cell lines to organ

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cultures, they can be categorised as per to their increasing complexity. The biotransformation
issue of potentially neurotoxic compounds is shared by all, although in specific instances the
more complete systems that are called explant or the organ cultures that mitigate this the
problem (Grandjean and Landrigan 2014). Complex and undefined additives, like the fetal
calf serum, human placental serum and horse serum, are used in many culture systems to
promote cell survival.
Most preparations in vitro are made from young animals, usually prenatal. However, a
number of studies were carried out on cultures derived from human neural tissue. A period of
high transition and growth typically occurs shortly once the cultures are established, and
circumstances become far more predictable when the cultures are preserved for weeks or
months. The formulations can therefore be used to research neurotoxic effects that may be
unique to the development of the nervous tissue and also to compare the effects of the agents
in the stable tissue growth (Schwartz et al. 2015).
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that different cell cultures are used in the testing and
assessment of the developmental toxicity. The researchers are trying to evaluate the effect of
various neurotoxins on the cell cultures so that it can help in the development of the various
techniques that can act as a therapy or treatment process. It also helps to determine the
sustainability of the cell cultures or the nervous system and the way in which it can be used
for the assessment of the toxins.

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References
Grandjean, P. and Landrigan, P.J., 2014. Neurobehavioural effects of developmental
toxicity. The lancet neurology, 13(3), pp.330-338.
Krug, A.K., Kolde, R., Gaspar, J.A., Rempel, E., Balmer, N.V., Meganathan, K., Vojnits, K.,
Baquié, M., Waldmann, T., Ensenat-Waser, R. and Jagtap, S., 2013. Human embryonic stem
cell-derived test systems for developmental neurotoxicity: a transcriptomics
approach. Archives of toxicology, 87(1), pp.123-143.
Mordwinkin, N.M., Burridge, P.W. and Wu, J.C., 2013. A review of human pluripotent stem
cell-derived cardiomyocytes for high-throughput drug discovery, cardiotoxicity screening,
and publication standards. Journal of cardiovascular translational research, 6(1), pp.22-30.
Schwartz, M.P., Hou, Z., Propson, N.E., Zhang, J., Engstrom, C.J., Costa, V.S., Jiang, P.,
Nguyen, B.K., Bolin, J.M., Daly, W. and Wang, Y., 2015. Human pluripotent stem cell-
derived neural constructs for predicting neural toxicity. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, 112(40), pp.12516-12521.
Singh, V.K., Kalsan, M., Kumar, N., Saini, A. and Chandra, R., 2015. Induced pluripotent
stem cells: applications in regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug
discovery. Frontiers in cell and developmental biology, 3, p.2.
Zimmer, B., Pallocca, G., Dreser, N., Foerster, S., Waldmann, T., Westerhout, J., Julien, S.,
Krause, K.H., van Thriel, C., Hengstler, J.G. and Sachinidis, A., 2014. Profiling of drugs and
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cell-based test battery. Archives of toxicology, 88(5), pp.1109-1126.