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Arch Toxicol (2014) 88:20852087 DOI 10.1007/s00204-014-1404-6
EDITORIAL
In vitro systems: current limitations and future perspectives
Ahmed Ghallab H. M. Bolt
At the end of each year, the Archives of Toxicology analyzes the most intensively studied elds of research published in our journal. This includes particularly research topics where important progress beyond the state of the art has been achieved. Moreover, the editors analyze the topics to which most manuscripts have been submitted and where most citations have been counted, try to identify the present state of the art and give recommendations how further progress beyond the state of the art can be achieved. Of course, these analyses represent individual opinions and have no inuence which manuscripts will be published in future; in this regard, only scientic quality is of relevance. Clearly, in vitro systems represent one of the most popular topics in our journal (Godoy et al. 2013; Azqueta and Collins 2013; Hessel et al. 2013; Jiang et al. 2013; Liu et al. 2013; Fraczek et al. 2013; Leist and Hartung 2013). This seems to represent a general trend in toxicological sciences (Weng et al. 2014; Waldmann et al. 2014; Karlsson et al. 2013; Onrubia et al. 2013; Lake et al. 2013; Houston et al. 2012; Hard-elauf et al. 2011; Ilowski et al. 2011; Gabriel et al. 2012; Hammad et al. 2013) but also in other disciplines of biomedical research (Zellmer et al. 2010; Godoy et al. 2009, 2010a, b; Ilowski et al. 2010; Meyer et al. 2011). In the Archives of Toxicology, in vitro systems are used to study mechanisms of action of toxic compounds, a traditional strategy since decades (Chen et al. 2013; Qu et al. 2013;
A. Ghallab (*)
Department of Forensic and Veterinary Toxicology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, South Valley University, Qena, Egypt e-mail: [email protected]
H. M. Bolt
Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at the Technical University of Dortmund (IfADo), 44139 Dortmund, Germany
Received: 22 October 2014 / Accepted: 23 October 2014 / Published online: 5 November 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Qing et al. 2013; Doricakova et al. 2013; Ren et al. 2013).
In recent years, a strong increase in the number of publications has been observed aiming to establish and improve in vitro systems (Ireno...