Use of High-Throughput Analyses in Placental Toxicological Studies
High-throughput screening (HTS) is a valuable tool for rapid evaluation of chemical toxicity and has been implemented across a variety of in vitro models and experimental platforms to explore placental toxicity. This presentation will cover the fundamentals of HTS as a high-level overview discussing its pros/cons and scientific contexts in which HTS is best utilized. Then, the presentation will focus on HTS in the context of placental toxicology with an emphasis on traditional 2D cell culture HTS methods. Specifically, we will discuss attributes of placental cell lines commonly used in HTS (e.g. BeWo, JEG-3, JAR, HTR8/SVneo, primary placental trophoblasts), commonly evaluated toxicological endpoints and the aspects of placental biology these endpoints inform, common complications and pitfalls, best practices, and a brief overview of data wrangling/management. Lastly, we will discuss the potential for integrating data derived from placental HTS assays into risk assessments, including the ability to inform hazard identification, mechanism of action (MOA), adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), and in vitro-to-in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE).