An in-vitro assay using human spermatozoa to detect toxicity of biologically active substances

Tino Vollmer*, Borje Ljungberg, Vera Jankowski, Joachim Jankowski, Griet Glorieux, Bernd G. Stegmayr

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Identifying the key toxic players within an in-vivo toxic syndrome is crucial to develop targeted therapies. Here, we established a novel method that characterizes the effect of single substances by means of an ex-vivo incubation set-up. We found that primary human spermatozoa elicit a distinct motile response on a (uremic) toxic milieu. Specifically, this approach describes the influence of a bulk toxic environment (uremia) as well as single substances (uremic toxins) by real-time analyzing motile cellular behavior. We established the human spermatozoa-based toxicity testing (HSTT) for detecting single substance-induced toxicity to be used as a screening tool to identify in-vivo toxins. Further, we propose an application of the HSTT as a method of clinical use to evaluate toxin-removing interventions (hemodialysis).

Original languageEnglish
Article number14525
Number of pages11
JournalScientific Reports
Volume9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Oct 2019

Keywords

  • CHRONIC KIDNEY-DISEASE
  • UREMIC TOXINS
  • SPERM
  • IDENTIFICATION
  • MECHANISMS
  • QUALITY
  • PROTEIN

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