New approaches to immunotoxicity testing.

New approaches to immunotoxicity testing are reviewed and discussed. A method of activating T-cells in vivo is presented which circumvents artifacts dur to viability effects encountered with in vitro mitogen assays. The use of adoptive transfer approaches to combine the advantages of in vitro manipulation with in vivo function assays is discussed relative to natural killer cells. The need for an in vitro metabolic activation step coupled to other in vitro immunologic assays is discussed.