How do chemists find out whether or not a chemical is toxic without, well, ingesting it?
In: Chemistry
There’s primarily 2 methods: **In Vivo** (Animal or human testing) and **In Vitro** (test tube cultures).
>In vitro toxicity testing is the scientific analysis of the effects of toxic chemical substances on cultured bacteria or mammalian cells. In vitro (literally ‘in glass’) testing methods are employed primarily to identify potentially hazardous chemicals and/or to confirm the lack of certain toxic properties in the early stages of the development of potentially useful new substances such as therapeutic drugs, agricultural chemicals and food additive
So ELI5: stick some cells under the microscope, introduce potential toxin and observe.
In Vitro observes only the particular cells or bacteria that you have selected and is not able to make full analysis of additional factors like immune response. Due to its limitation of the cultures not being part of an intact organism In Vitro is normally used as the first step and doesn’t eliminate to need for In Vivo (Animal or human testing).
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