Tarja Toimela

TL;DR: RPE is an interesting in vitro model for the evaluation of retinal toxicity, but, in addition to the WST-1 test, more specific tests and markers based on the homeostatic functions of the RPE are needed.

TL;DR: Conventional cytotoxicity assays are better suited to rank the order of toxicity of different nanoparticles instead of producing accurate IC50 data and using immune cells, especially macrophages together with fibroblasts, would bring more relevant predictions of ENM cytotoxic as immune cells may discover cytot toxicity that is not captured by BALB/c 3T3 cells alone.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of tamoxifen and chloroquine on the activity of the lysosomal enzymes N-acetyl-beta-glucosaminidase and cathepsin D in RPE in vitro to evaluate the possible eye toxicity caused by these drugs.

TL;DR: The main lysosomal protease cathepsin D was more sensitive than N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase to the effects of tamoxifen and toremifene, possibly due to their antioestrogenic properties, and phenol red-free medium with charcoal-stripped serum seemed to make the drugs more effective than the reference medium.

TL;DR: Compared to the use of neurons alone, better estimations of neurotoxicity can be made by the combined use of metabolically competent hepatocytes and glial cells together with neuronal cells (e.g. SH-SY5Y).