Comparison between the Two Endpoints of the Embryotoxicity Test using the Contracting Myocardial Cells and the Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) Activity

The Embryo Stem Cell Test (EST) using mouse ES cell differentiation is an in vitro embryotoxicity screening test protocol. This EST protocol requires a 10-day or longer culture because the differentiation of contracting myocardial cells. Therefore, we developed a novel assessment method using alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity as an endpoint, and compared the results obtained with the EST and our methods regarding four kinds of dental monomer. Bis-GMA was found to be weakly embryotoxic by the EST method, but non-embryotoxic by our method using ALP activity. No difference was found in the results for the other monomers by these methods. In the future, more data should be collected to establish our method.