Advantage of in vitro models

Advantages of in vitro models include the ability to carefully modulate exposure conditions and dissect mechanisms of action. Unlike studies in laboratory animals, in vitro models enable the use of paired controls and treated samples from the same set of incubations. Another advantage specifically for studies of renal function and nephrotoxicity is that in vitro models can be constructed that derive from specific nephron segments, thereby allowing study of effects at the specific sites in the kidneys where they occur. 

Also the renal 3D models, which have been described recently, have been tested with <10 compounds and their predictivity is unclear. One of these renal 3D models is based on hydrogel-embedded PT isolated from murine kidneys (Astashkina et al., 2012a). Thus, two of the main potential advantages of in vitro models do not apply here, which are (1) use of human cells and (2) avoidance of animal experiments. The four compounds tested with this model included doxorubicin, which gave in addition to cisplatin the most consistent positive resnlts (cytokine release was measured as endpoint). However, in humans doxorubicin toxicity usually does not affect the PT. Doxorubicin has substantial hepato- and cardiotoxicity, but only ntinor toxic effects on the kidney, which are mainly limited to the glomerulus (Tacar et al., 2013). 

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