Quantitative correlation of carcinogenic potency with four different classes of short-term test data

The search for a short-term mutagenicity test to identify potential carcinogens has yielded over 100 assay systems, including the Ames test. This paper continues the investigation of Travis et al. into the prediction of carcinogenic potency of known mouse carcinogens using different classes of short-term toxicologic data. We used four classes of short-term test data (mutation, toxicity, reproduction and tumorigenicity) from the Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS) database. We conclude that mutation data alone are poor predictors of carcinogenic potency, accounting for only 21% of the observed variability in experimentally-determined mouse TD50 values. We further conclude that batteries of toxicologic data containing varying types of short-term data are excellent predictors of the carcinogenic potency of known mouse carcinogens: four types of short-term data account for 82% of the observed variability in experimentally-obtained mouse TD50 values. By using all available toxicological data, we obtained a strong correlation between toxicologic assay results and carcinogenic potency of known mouse carcinogens.