Mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and other end points

Methods Mol Biol. 2013:930:67-98. doi: 10.1007/978-1-62703-059-5_4.

Abstract

Aiming at understanding the structural and physical chemical basis of the biological activity of chemicals, the science of structure-activity relationships has seen dramatic progress in the last decades. Coarse-grain, qualitative approaches (e.g., the structural alerts), and fine-tuned quantitative structure-activity relationship models have been developed and used to predict the toxicological properties of untested chemicals. More recently, a number of approaches and concepts have been developed as support to, and corollary of, the structure-activity methods. These approaches (e.g., chemical relational databases, expert systems, software tools for manipulating the chemical information) have dramatically expanded the reach of the structure-activity work; at present, they are powerful and inescapable tools for computer chemists, toxicologists, and regulators. This chapter, after a general overview of traditional and well-known approaches, gives a detailed presentation of the latter more recent support tools freely available in the public domain.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Carcinogens / toxicity*
  • Endpoint Determination / methods*
  • Humans
  • Mutagens / toxicity*
  • Structure-Activity Relationship
  • Toxicity Tests

Substances

  • Carcinogens
  • Mutagens