Micronucleus assays with the human derived liver cell line (Huh6): A promising approach to reduce the use of laboratory animals in genetic toxicology
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Tahereh Setayesh; Georg Krupitza; Franziska Ferk; Armen Nersesyan; Klaus Holzmann; Miroslav Mišík; Benjamin Ernst; Michael Kment; Siegfried Knasmueller
- Source
- Food and chemical toxicology : an international journal published for the British Industrial Biological Research Association. 154
- Subject
- Biology
Pharmacology
Toxicology
medicine.disease_cause
Sensitivity and Specificity
03 medical and health sciences
chemistry.chemical_compound
0404 agricultural biotechnology
Cell Line, Tumor
medicine
Humans
Carcinogen
030304 developmental biology
0303 health sciences
Micronucleus Tests
Mutagenicity Tests
Liver cell
In vitro toxicology
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
General Medicine
040401 food science
In vitro
chemistry
Carcinogens
Micronucleus
Xenobiotic
Genotoxicity
Food Science
Genetic Toxicology
Mutagens
- Language
- ISSN
- 1873-6351
The inadequate representation of enzymes which catalyze the activation/detoxification of xenobiotics in cells that are currently used in genotoxicity testing of chemicals leads to a high number of false positive results and the number of follow up studies with rodents could be reduced by use of more reliable in vitro models. We found earlier that several xenobiotic drug metabolizing enzymes are represented in the human derived liver cell line Huh6 and developed a protocol for micronucleus (MN) experiments which is in agreement with the current OECD guideline. This protocol was used to test 23 genotoxic and non-genotoxic reference chemicals; based on these results and of earlier findings (with 9 chemicals) we calculated the predictive value of the assay for the detection of genotoxic carcinogens. We found a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 94% for a total number of 32 chemicals; comparisons with results obtained with other in vitro assays show that the validity of MN tests with Huh6 is higher as that of other experimental models. These results are promising and indicate that the use of Huh6 cells in genetic toxicology may contribute to the reduction of the use of laboratory rodents; further experimental work to confirm this assumption is warranted.