Skin sensitization in silico protocol

The assessment of skin sensitization has evolved over the past few years to include in vitro assessments of key events along the adverse outcome pathway and opportunistically capitalize on the strengths of in silico methods to support a weight of evidence assessment without conducting a test in animals. While in silico methods vary greatly in their purpose and format; there is a need to standardize the underlying principles on which such models are developed and to make transparent the implications for the uncertainty in the overall assessment. In this contribution, the relationship of skin sensitization relevant effects, mechanisms, and endpoints are built into a hazard assessment framework. Based on the relevance of the mechanisms and effects as well as the strengths and limitations of the experimental systems used to identify them, rules and principles are defined for deriving skin sensitization in silico assessments. Further, the assignments of reliability and confidence scores that reflect the overall strength of the assessment are discussed. This skin sensitization protocol supports the implementation and acceptance of in silico approaches for the prediction of skin sensitization

Inhibition of Fried Meat-Induced Colorectal DNA Damage and Altered Systemic Genotoxicity in Humans by Crucifera, Chlorophyllin, and Yogurt

Dietary exposures implicated as reducing or causing risk for colorectal cancer may reduce or cause DNA damage in colon tissue; however, no one has assessed this hypothesis directly in humans. Thus, we enrolled 16 healthy volunteers in a 4-week controlled feeding study where 8 subjects were randomly assigned to dietary regimens containing meat cooked at either low (100°C) or high temperature (250°C), each for 2 weeks in a crossover design. The other 8 subjects were randomly assigned to dietary regimens containing the high-temperature meat diet alone or in combination with 3 putative mutagen inhibitors: cruciferous vegetables, yogurt, and chlorophyllin tablets, also in a crossover design. Subjects were nonsmokers, at least 18 years old, and not currently taking prescription drugs or antibiotics. We used the Salmonella assay to analyze the meat, urine, and feces for mutagenicity, and the comet assay to analyze rectal biopsies and peripheral blood lymphocytes for DNA damage. Low-temperature meat had undetectable levels of heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and was not mutagenic, whereas high-temperature meat had high HCA levels and was highly mutagenic. The high-temperature meat diet increased the mutagenicity of hydrolyzed urine and feces compared to the low-temperature meat diet. The mutagenicity of hydrolyzed urine was increased nearly twofold by the inhibitor diet, indicating that the inhibitors enhanced conjugation. Inhibitors decreased significantly the mutagenicity of un-hydrolyzed and hydrolyzed feces. The diets did not alter the levels of DNA damage in non-target white blood cells, but the inhibitor diet decreased nearly twofold the DNA damage in target colorectal cells. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that dietary factors can reduce DNA damage in the target tissue of fried-meat associated carcinogenesis.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00340743

Protective effects of beta-glucan extracted from Agaricus brasiliensis against chemically induced DNA damage in human lymphocytes

beta-Glucans (BGs) are polysaccharides that are found in the cell walls of organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and some cereals. The objective of the present study was to investigate the genotoxic and antigenotoxic effects of BG extracted from the mushroom Agaricus brasiliensis (=Agaricus blazei Murrill ss. Heinemann). The mutagenic activity of BG was tested in single-cell gel electrophoresis assays with human peripheral lymphocytes. In addition, the protective effects against the cooked food mutagen 3-amino-1-methyl-5H-pyrido[4,3-b]indole (Trp-P-2) and (+/-)-anti-B[a]P-7,8-dihydrodiol-9,10-epoxide (BPDE), which is the main metabolite of B[a]P, and against ROS (H2O2)-induced DNA damage, were studied. The results showed that the compound itself was devoid of mutagenic activity, and that a significant dose-dependent protective effect against damage induced by hydrogen peroxide and Trp-P-2 occurred in the dose range 20-80 mu g/ml. To investigate the prevention of Trp-P-2-induced DNA damage, a binding assay was carried out to determine whether BG inactivates the amine via direct binding. Since no such interactions were observed, it is likely that BG interacts with enzymes involved in the metabolism of the amine

Genetic toxicology in silico protocol

In silico toxicology (IST) approaches to rapidly assess chemical hazard, and usage of such methods is increasing in all applications but especially for regulatory submissions, such as for assessing chemicals under REACH as well as the ICH M7 guideline for drug impurities. There are a number of obstacles to performing an IST assessment, including uncertainty in how such an assessment and associated expert review should be performed or what is fit for purpose, as well as a lack of confidence that the results will be accepted by colleagues, collaborators and regulatory authorities. To address this, a project to develop a series of IST protocols for different hazard endpoints has been initiated and this paper describes the genetic toxicity in silico (GIST) protocol. The protocol outlines a hazard assessment framework including key effects/mechanisms and their relationships to endpoints such as gene mutation and clastogenicity. IST models and data are reviewed that support the assessment of these effects/mechanisms along with defined approaches for combining the information and evaluating the confidence in the assessment. This protocol has been developed through a consortium of toxicologists, computational scientists, and regulatory scientists across several industries to support the implementation and acceptance of in silico approaches