Jf. Sina et al., A COLLABORATIVE EVALUATION OF 7 ALTERNATIVES TO THE DRAIZE EYE IRRITATION TEST USING PHARMACEUTICAL INTERMEDIATES, Fundamental and applied toxicology, 26(1), 1995, pp. 20-31
Much of the data which have been generated on in vitro alternatives to
the Draize eye irritation test have dealt with compounds within a spe
cific chemical class or product category. However, in the pharmaceutic
al industry, it is often necessary to evaluate materials which are not
related in structure or properties. It was thus decided to evaluate a
diverse series of chemicals in seven in vitro methods for estimating
ocular irritation. Thirty-seven test materials were chosen to represen
t a broad range of pH, solubility, and in vivo irritation potential. A
ssays were chosen to include as many different types of end points as
practical. The group of assays was composed of TOPKAT (assessing struc
ture-activity relationships), bovine corneal opacity-permeability (BCO
-P; corneal opacity/toxicity), Eytex (protein coagu lation), neutral r
ed uptake (cytotoxicity), MTT in living dermal equivalent (cytotoxicit
y), Microtox (cytotoxicity in bacteria), and CAMVA (inflammation/toxic
ity). The results of the study indicated that, in general, the cytotox
icity end points did not correlate well with the in vivo data. The BCO
-P, CAMVA, and Eytex assays had the best overall concordance (88.9, 75
.8, and 75.0%, respectively) with this set of compounds. Estimation of
irritation potential based on structure-activity (TOPKAT) was possibl
e for only approximately 50% of the compounds; however, the assay show
ed 100% sensitivity (i.e., no false negatives), but low specificity (i
.e., negatives correctly identified only 54.5% of the time). These dat
a suggest that for screening of chemicals of diverse structure and pro
perties, the more mechanism-based assays, as opposed to general cytoto
xicity assays, hold more promise and should be further evaluated. (C)
1995 society of Toxicology.