Quantitative high-throughput screening for chemical toxicity in a population-based in vitro model. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A shift in toxicity testing from in vivo to in vitro may efficiently prioritize compounds, reveal new mechanisms, and enable predictive modeling. Quantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) is a major source of data for computational toxicology, and our goal in this study was to aid in the development of predictive in vitro models of chemical-induced toxicity, anchored on interindividual genetic variability. Eighty-one human lymphoblast cell lines from 27 Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain trios were exposed to 240 chemical substances (12 concentrations, 0.26nM-46.0M) and evaluated for cytotoxicity and apoptosis. qHTS screening in the genetically defined population produced robust and reproducible results, which allowed for cross-compound, cross-assay, and cross-individual comparisons. Some compounds were cytotoxic to all cell types at similar concentrations, whereas others exhibited interindividual differences in cytotoxicity. Specifically, the qHTS in a population-based human in vitro model system has several unique aspects that are of utility for toxicity testing, chemical prioritization, and high-throughput risk assessment. First, standardized and high-quality concentration-response profiling, with reproducibility confirmed by comparison with previous experiments, enables prioritization of chemicals for variability in interindividual range in cytotoxicity. Second, genome-wide association analysis of cytotoxicity phenotypes allows exploration of the potential genetic determinants of interindividual variability in toxicity. Furthermore, highly significant associations identified through the analysis of population-level correlations between basal gene expression variability and chemical-induced toxicity suggest plausible mode of action hypotheses for follow-up analyses. We conclude that as the improved resolution of genetic profiling can now be matched with high-quality in vitro screening data, the evaluation of the toxicity pathways and the effects of genetic diversity are now feasible through the use of human lymphoblast cell lines.

published proceedings

  • Toxicol Sci

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Lock, E. F., Abdo, N., Huang, R., Xia, M., Kosyk, O., O'Shea, S. H., ... Rusyn, I.

citation count

  • 38

complete list of authors

  • Lock, Eric F||Abdo, Nour||Huang, Ruili||Xia, Menghang||Kosyk, Oksana||O'Shea, Shannon H||Zhou, Yi-Hui||Sedykh, Alexander||Tropsha, Alexander||Austin, Christopher P||Tice, Raymond R||Wright, Fred A||Rusyn, Ivan

publication date

  • April 2012