BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Toxic assets

April 10, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

A new tool for in vivo detection of liver toxicity could represent a significant improvement over routine methods that only work in vitro or on tissue slices.1 The litmus test for the Stanford University inventors will be to show that the nanoparticle-based method can detect toxicity in compounds that previously eluded standard analysis and later failed in the clinic.

Current preclinical toxicity testing methods are clearly suboptimal, as more than 20% of compounds end up failing clinical trials because of toxicity issues.2...