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Testing the toxicity of pharmaceutical candidates in lab rats before the compounds are judged safe enough for human clinical trials is notoriously unreliable. Often compounds that appear safe in the rodents prove to be toxic in humans.

To come up with a better way of predicting toxicity, Gabriela Cezar, assistant professor of animal science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is turning to human embryonic stem cells. In the current issue of Stem Cells and Development, Cezar and her colleagues reveal a novel way to test drug toxicity: by monitoring the behavior of embryonic stem cells exposed to a drug-candidate compound. Studying how potential drugs affect embryonic stem cells could provide a far more accurate prediction of a drug’s potential toxicity than conventional animal models can.