Cancer Biology, Toxicology and Alternative Methods Development Go Hand‐in‐Hand

• Published in: Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology Vol. 115; no. 1; pp. 50 - 58
• Main Authors: Kohonen, Pekka, Ceder, Rebecca, Smit, Ines, Hongisto, Vesa, Myatt, Glenn, Hardy, Barry, Spjuth, Ola, Grafström, Roland
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell 01-07-2014; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Animals; Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - toxicity; Biological and medical sciences; Cancer; Chemical industry; Computational Biology - methods; Databases, Factual; Doxorubicin - toxicity; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling; Humans; Medical research; Medical sciences; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Methods; Multiple tumors. Solid tumors. Tumors in childhood (general aspects); Neoplasms - chemically induced; Neoplasms - diagnosis; Neoplasms - genetics; Pharmacology. Drug treatments; Toxicity Tests - methods; Toxicology; Tumors; Toxicology; Biology; Method; Malignant tumor; Hand; Cancer
• ISSN: 1742-7835; 1742-7843; 1742-7843
• DOI: 10.1111/bcpt.12257

Toxicological research faces the challenge of integrating knowledge from diverse fields and novel technological developments generally in the biological and medical sciences. We discuss herein the fact that the multiple facets of cancer research, including discovery related to mechanisms, treatment and diagnosis, overlap many up and coming interest areas in toxicology, including the need for improved methods and analysis tools. Common to both disciplines, in vitro and in silico methods serve as alternative investigation routes to animal studies. Knowledge on cancer development helps in understanding the relevance of chemical toxicity studies in cell models, and many bioinformatics‐based cancer biomarker discovery tools are also applicable to computational toxicology. Robotics‐aided, cell‐based, high‐throughput screening, microscale immunostaining techniques and gene expression profiling analyses are common tools in cancer research, and when sequentially combined, form a tiered approach to structured safety evaluation of thousands of environmental agents, novel chemicals or engineered nanomaterials. Comprehensive tumour data collections in databases have been translated into clinically useful data, and this concept serves as template for computer‐driven evaluation of toxicity data into meaningful results. Future ‘cancer research‐inspired knowledge management’ of toxicological data will aid the translation of basic discovery results and chemicals‐ and materials‐testing data to information relevant to human health and environmental safety.