'Expert Intuition' Tops in Test Of Carcinogenicity Prediction
ΒΕTTΕ HILEMAN · Chemical & Engineering News · 1993
In 1990, Raymond W. Tennant of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Research Triangle Park, N.C., and several colleagues issued a unique challenge. They asked all interested parties to predict the rodent carcinogenicity of the 44 chemicals that were then being tested in rodent bioassays by the National Toxicology Program (NTP)—the federal program centered at NIEHS that performs toxicological evaluations of chemicals. Seven groups, including Tennant's, and one individual took up the challenge. They based their predictions on one or more of the following properties: chemical substructure, mutagenicity, toxicity, reactivity, steric and electronic structure, and interaction with cell receptors. Four of the groups employed computer programs, two used uncomputerized systems that assessed only one or two parameters of the chemicals, and Tennant's group employed what might be called expert intuition, taking into consideration nearly all available relevant knowledge about the test chemicals. The eighth group used relative toxicity data to modify Tennant's original ...