Alternative to animal experiments: Fish cell test internationally certified
Dübendorf, 25.04.2019 - For the first time ever, a toxicity test with cultured gill cell lines from fish has been ISO-certified. The test is used to determine the acute toxicity of water samples and chemicals to fish. This is an important milestone because there is a lack of recognised alternatives to experiments with live fish.
In 2017, more than 7,500 ecotoxicological tests were carried out on fish in Switzerland alone with the aim of protecting humans, animals and the environment. For many years, Eawag has been researching alternatives in order to reduce or even replace fish experiments. One of these alternatives involves experiments with a gill cell line of rainbow trout (RTgill W1 cell line), which can be used to reliably determine the acute toxicity of water samples and many chemicals to fish.
Under the leadership of Prof Kristin Schirmer, the Department of Environmental Toxicology has continuously refined the method over the last few years. In an international round-robin study, six laboratories from industry and academia took part and determined the robustness, transferability and comparability of the method with the RTgill-W1 cell line on the basis of six selected test chemicals. The results show that all laboratories were able to provide reproducibly comparable results using this procedure. This methodology has recently also been extended to comply with ISO standards, which serve as standard references for researchers and manufacturers in tests.
Interview with Kristin Schirmer about the cell line experiments on www.eawag.ch
Address for enquiries
Prof Dr Kristin Schirmer, kristin.schirmer@eawag.ch, +41 58 765 5266
Publisher
Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
http://www.eawag.ch
