The influence of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening (HTS) technologies in the pharmaceutical industry during
the last 10 years has been enormous. However, the attrition rate of drugs in the clinic due to toxicity during this period
still remained 40-50%. The need for reduced toxicity failure led to the development of early toxicity screening assays. This
chapter describes the state of the art for assays in the area of genotoxicity, cytotoxicity, carcinogenicity, induction of
specific enzymes from phase I and II metabolism, competition assays for enzymes of phase I and II metabolism, embryotoxicity
as well as endocrine disruption and reprotoxicity. With respect to genotoxicity, the full Ames, Ames II, Vitotox™, GreenScreen
GC, RadarScreen, and non-genotoxic carcinogenicity assays are discussed. For cytotoxicity, cellular proliferation, calcein
uptake, oxygen consumption, mitochondrial activity, radical formation, glutathione depletion as well as apoptosis are described.
For high-content screening (HCS), the possibilities for analysis of cytotoxicity, micronuclei, centrosome formation and phospholipidosis
are examined. For embryotoxicity, endocrine disruption and reprotoxicity alternative assays are reviewed for fast track analysis
by means of nuclear receptors and membrane receptors. Moreover, solutions for analyzing enzyme induction by activation of
nuclear receptors, like AhR, CAR, PXR, PPAR, FXR, LXR, TR and RAR are given.