Description
The lack of accurate in vitro assays for predicting in vivo toxicity of chemicals together with new legislations demanding replacement and reduction of animal testing has triggered the development of alternative methods. This study aimed at developing a transcriptomics-based in vitro prediction assay for in vivo genotoxicity. The transcriptomics changes induced in the human liver cell line HepG2 by 34 compounds after treatment for 12h, 24h and 48h were used for the selection of gene-sets that can discriminate between in vivo genotoxins (GTX) and in vivo non-genotoxins (NGTX). By combining publicly available results for these chemicals from standard in vitro genotoxicity studies with transcriptomics, we developed several prediction models. These models were validated by means of an additional set of 28 chemicals.