The State of the Science report provides its readers a comprehensive summary of the problems facing the water quality in the future due to the ever increasing number of chemicals within unknown toxicity and the role in vitro bioassays could play in the future. This approach is not without its challenges and the report describes some of these as well as current applications. Outlook for bioassay applications is considered and the report concludes with both the possibilities of in vitro bioassays and their limitations.

The publication was commissioned by the Global Water Research Coalition to Drs Shane Snyder and Frederic Leusch.