Roche xCELLigence System Reduces the Need for Animal Testing, Lab Rats Rejoice

Currently, when a pharmaceutical company wants to test the toxicity of drug candidate chemicals, they turn to in vivo tests on living animals. However, a new study performed by Roche Pharma and Roche Applied Science details a method for testing hepatotoxicity which could potentially reduce the cost of cytotoxicity testing and spare many animal lives in the future. This new method uses Roche’s xCELLigence system, which can determine the toxicity of a compound through biochemical assays and gene expression analysis. Unlike in vivo testing, the xCELLigence system can also provide quantitative cell analysis in real time.
From the xCELLigence product page:

The xCELLigence System monitors cellular events in real time without the incorporation of labels. The System measures electrical impedance across interdigitated micro-electrodes integrated on the bottom of tissue culture E-Plates.
The impedance measurement provides quantitative information about the biological status of the cells, including cell number, viability, and morphology. A wide range of cell-based assays for both high throughput screening and research laboratory environments can be performed on the xCELLigence System.