Primary cultures of tracheal epithelial cells for the evaluation of respiratory toxicity.

Cytotoxic assays have been carried out to evaluate toxic effects of acrolein, mechlorethamin, parathion and paraoxon, using primary cultures of rabbit tracheal epithelium obtained by the explant outgrowth technique. The effect of drug exposure was first evaluated by the tetrazolium salt assay, neutral red uptake and release of cellular lactate dehydrogenase. These assays, previously developed for cell line cultures, were adapted to our model. In addition, we present in this paper an easy and rapid method to evaluate the effect of chemicals on cell proliferation. This was performed using an image analysis method, and was found to be the most sensitive marker to determine the acute toxicity of chemicals.