Current approaches to toxicity testing are time consuming, expensive, and typically rely on investigations that evaluate observable changes to whole animals. New approaches capable of assessing environmental contaminants in a cost- and time-efficient manner are required to provide information necessary for sound evaluation of the health effects of adverse environmental agents by the US EPA and other government agencies. These agencies often require Good Laboratory Practices (GLPs) as a means to document the performance of a particular study so that the experiment can be successfully reconstructed from archived information at a future date. Many universities do not have a Quality Assurance Unit; regular review of performance standards and documentation, which is in compliance with GLPs, is limited. Instead, the peer review process serves as a mechanism to ensure the quality of the data and analysis. To this end, we evaluated neurolemma-injected Xenopus oocytes as a system to characterize the action of pyrethroids on voltage-sensitive sodium channels. Our results indicate that rat brain neurolemma-injected oocytes display several different native ion channels into their plasma membrane. Microtransplanted ion currents were sensitive to TTX, omega-conotoxin MVIIC, and chlorotoxin, indicating the presence multiple voltage-sensitive ion channels (voltage-sensitive sodium, calcium, and chloride channels) germane to the neuroexcitatory action of pyrethroids. This presentation will focus on the development of a high-throughput assay to characterize the effects of pyrethroids on different age rats in the spirit of GLP, including the documentation of test substances, calibration criteria for instrumentation and other methods employed to insure that the only variation observed is due to the biological preparation.

Evaluation of an in vitro assay to characterize the effects of environmental contaminants on native ion channels in the spirit of good laboratory practices: Role of university labs

246th National Meeting (2013)

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