An In Vitro Model of Hematotoxicity: Differentiation of Bone Marrow–Derived Stem/Progenitor Cells into Hematopoietic Lineages and Evaluation of Lineage-Specific Hematotoxicity

Hematotoxicity is a significant issue for drug safety and can result from direct cytotoxicity toward circulating mature blood cell types as well as targeting of immature blood-forming stem cells/progenitor cells in the bone marrow. In vitro models for understanding and investigating the hematotoxicity potential of new test items/drugs are critical in early preclinical drug development. The traditional method, colony forming unit (CFU) assay, is commonly used and has been validated as a method for hematotoxicity screening. The CFU assay has multiple limitations for its application in investigative work. In this paper, we describe a detailed protocol for a liquid-culture, microplate-based in vitro hematotoxicity assay to evaluate lineage-specific (myeloid, erythroid, and megakaryocytic) hematotoxicity at different stages of differentiation. This assay has multiple advantages over the traditional CFU assay, including being suitable for high-throughput screening and flexible enough to allow inclusion of additional endpoints for mechanistic studies. Therefore, it is an extremely useful tool for scientists in pharmaceutical discovery and development. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.