Embryonic stem cell test in screening of medicine and other chemicals / 生物医学工程学杂志

ABSTRACT

The technique of embryonic stem cell test (EST) has been developed and used in vitro to screen new medicines and other chemicals. According to toxicity, such medicines and chemicals can be classified as non-toxic, weak toxic and/or strong toxic. EST shows merits such as no requirement of the sacrifice of pregnant animals, no side-effects on human or animals for candidate medicines and chemicals, higher sensitivity of embryonic stem cells when compared with the sensitivity of ordinary tissues of adult samples in toxicologic researches, higher accuracy when combined with computing techniques, and possible quantitation based on techniques of molecular biology. Advances in utility of EST technique were reviewed and the prospect of technique was also discussed in this paper.