MicroRNA and mRNA biomarkers for short-term in vivo genotoxic and non-genotoxic carcinogen classification

Many innovative techniques and scientific improvements are available to tackle societal concerns, like public health safety and confining the risk of cancerous exposure to chemicals, but have not been thoroughly tested and implicated yet. We investigated if microRNA and mRNA transcription profiles can be implemented in a short-term carcinogen classifier assay. Our study is additionally focusing on the drawbacks of present-day carcinogen screening strategies and also aims to contribute to a more ethical approach towards animal use and welfare within risk assessment. Since current in vitro and in silico assays are still not able to mimic the in vivo situation accurately we set out to develop an alternative short-term in vivo assay. Five genotoxic, seven non-genotoxic and five non-carcinogen exposure studies were used to investigate if murine hepatic microRNA and mNA profiles after 7-day exposure are suitable tools to classify carcinogens. Classification analyses showed that a small transcript set, consisting of both microRNA and mRNA, is able to classify the genotoxic, non-genotoxic and non-carcinogens tested with 100% accuracy. The results indicate that microRNAs have the potential to be used as transcriptional classifiers and that a short-term transcriptional classifier assay in mice can be a powerful tool in carcinogenicity risk assessment.

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