Despite the market for drugs used to cure CNS disorders
is set to grow substantially in the coming years, due to an
aging population, CNS drugs have a low chance of success in drug
development. This is explained by the complexity of the brain and
the liability of CNS drugs to cause CNS side effects, not always
identified by traditional neurotoxicity testing for the abovementioned
reasons. These observations, together with an increasing
demand for reduction of animal use in toxicological testing,
strongly push toward the development of suitable in vitro methods
for neurotoxicity testing, able to predict neurotoxicity in the early
stage of drug development.