Environmental Monitoring: Evaluating Cellular Response Pathways in Complex Mixtures

 

Cell-based in vitro bioassays have been used in environmental monitoring to detect and quantify the presence of micropollutants in water samples. These assays provide scientists with a rapid, sensitive and cost-effective tool for evaluating the impact that environmental contaminants may have on biological activity.

However, the complexity of chemical mixtures in environmental matrices makes it difficult to choose which cellular response pathways to evaluate. The typical workflow for evaluating bioactivity of environmental samples is to either use previous studies to predict which pathways are important or to sequentially evaluate many different assays to determine which are being impacted. The former approach has a tendency for false-negative conclusions, whereas the latter is cost prohibitive in most cases. These challenges raise an interesting question: Is there a better way to determine what pathways are impacted by individual contaminants as well as complex mixtures? The answer is yes!

In this webinar, Dr. Jack Vanden Heuvel will review recent environmental toxicology research that employs an alternative workflow for evaluating water samples. This method allows researchers to maximize the number of receptors and pathways evaluated while providing better throughput and toxicologic information. The speaker will highlight several specific pathways grouped by the following biological functions:

• Toxicology and inflammatory pathways
• Reproductive and developmental effects
• Xenobiotic and bile acid metabolism
• Lipid and energy metabolism
• Central nervous system and basal metabolism

Learn more about how this alternative assay workflow can help researchers reduce the time and cost of evaluating complex mixtures.