Speaking at a Johns Hopkins Medicine Symposium exploring humane methods of testing chemicals for brain toxicity last week, Dr. Karl Johe, Chairman & Chief Scientific Officer of Neuralstem Inc., discussed progress Neuralstem has made utilizing neural stem cells to test whether or not a substance is harmful to human brain tissue, especially during fetal and early childhood development. Toxicity testing is a vitally important step for commercialization of most household and industrial chemicals as well as drugs and drug candidates. Current methods for testing potential toxicity to the nervous system typically involve the use of many animals.
