Table 4.

The main nanotoxicological advantages and disadvantages of multi-cellular primary 3D liver MT in the assessment of the tissue as a potential in vivo surrogate

Advantages	Disadvantages
Human tissue	Cost of plates can be potentially prohibitive to academia
Primary cells	Toxicological assessment beyond 2 weeks might not be ideal in a nano context
Incorporation of numerous liver cell populations - hepatocytes, Kupffer cells and endothelial cells	There is no physiological structure to the tissue - cells aggregate randomly
High metabolic activity
In vitro model which allows for repeated long term exposure of xenobiotics
Little variability between MT in wells and plates
Scaffold-free with 100% endogenous extracellular matrix