Two-year rodent bioassays play a central role in evaluating both the carcinogenic potential of a chemical and generating quantitative information on the dose-response behavior for chemical risk assessments. The bioassays involved are expensive and time-consuming, requiring nearly lifetime exposures (two years) in mice and rats and costing $2 to $4 million per chemical. Since there are approximately 80,000 chemicals registered for commercial use in the United States and 2,000 more are added each year, applying animal bioassays to all chemicals of concern is clearly impossible. To efficiently and economically identify carcinogens prior to widespread use and human exposure, alternatives to the two-year rodent bioassay must be developed. In this study, animals were exposed for 13 weeks to 10 chemicals that were positive for liver tumors in the two-year rodent bioassay, 14 chemicals that were negative for liver tumors, and two chemicals that produced an equivocal response. Matched vehicle control groups were run concurrently with each chemical treatment. Gene expression analysis was performed on the livers of the animals to assess the potential for identifying gene expression biomarkers and signaling pathways that can predict tumor formation in a two-year bioassay following a 13 week exposure.
Overall design
Five-week-old female B6C3F1 mice were exposed for 13 weeks to 26 chemicals. The chemical and dose information are provided with the individual sample annotations. With each chemical treatment, a matched vehicle control group was run concurrently with the exposure. A subset of five chemicals, methylene chloride, naphthalene, 1,2,3-trichloropropane, propylene glycol mono-t-butyl ether, and 1,4-dichlorobenzene, were performed in a five-point dose response with matched control groups. The concentrations for these exposures overlapped those in the original cancer bioassay. Gavage exposures were administered 5 days per week and feed exposures were provided 7 days per week. For inhalation exposures, mice were exposed 6 hr per day, 5 days per week. After 13 weeks, animals were euthanized and livers were collected. The right, caudate and median liver lobes were minced together and used for microarray analysis. Microarray analysis was performed on the livers of three to five mice per treatment group.
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