In vitro approaches to determine the potential carcinogenic risk of environmental pollutants

One important environmental/health challenge is to determine, in a feasible way, the potential carcinogenic risk associated with environmental agents/exposures. Since a significant proportion of tumors have an environmental origin, detecting the potential carcinogenic risk of environmental agents is...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Barguilla, Irene|||0000-0003-1081-4457, Maguer-Satta, Veronique|||0000-0002-1556-068X, Guyot, Boris|||0000-0002-4512-7123, Pastor Benito, Susana|||0000-0003-2454-5163, Marcos Dauder, Ricardo|||0000-0001-7891-357X, Hernández Bonilla, Alba|||0000-0001-6938-1233
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:274511
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/274511
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.3390/ijms24097851
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:In vitro cell transformation
Oncogenic phenotype
Cancer hallmarks
Long-term exposure
Descripción
Sumario:One important environmental/health challenge is to determine, in a feasible way, the potential carcinogenic risk associated with environmental agents/exposures. Since a significant proportion of tumors have an environmental origin, detecting the potential carcinogenic risk of environmental agents is mandatory, as regulated by national and international agencies. The challenge mainly implies finding a way of how to overcome the inefficiencies of long-term trials with rodents when thousands of agents/exposures need to be tested. To such an end, the use of in vitro cell transformation assays (CTAs) was proposed, but the existing prevalidated CTAs do not cover the complexity associated with carcinogenesis processes and present serious limitations. To overcome such limitations, we propose to use a battery of assays covering most of the hallmarks of the carcinogenesis process. For the first time, we grouped such assays as early, intermediate, or advanced biomarkers which allow for the identification of the cells inthe initiation, promotion or aggressive stages of tumorigenesis. Our proposal, as a novelty, points out that using a battery containing assays from all three groups can identify if a certain agent/exposure can pose a carcinogenic risk; furthermore, it can gather mechanistic insights into the mode of the action of a specific carcinogen. This structured battery could be very useful for any type of in vitro study, containing human cell lines aiming to detect the potential carcinogenic risks of environmental agents/exposures. In fact, here, we include examples in which these approaches were successfully applied. Finally, we provide a series of advantages that, we believe, contribute to the suitability of our proposed approach for the evaluation of exposure-induced carcinogenic effects and for the development of an alternative strategy for conducting an exposure risk assessment.