Protectiveness of NAM-based hazard assessment – which testing scope is required?

Hazard assessment requires toxicity tests to allow deriving protective points of departure (PoDs) for risk assessment irrespective of a compound’s mode of action (MoA). The scope of in vitro test batteries (ivTB) needed to assess systemic toxicity is still unclear. We explored the protectiveness regarding systemic toxicity of an ivTB with a scope that was guided by previous findings from rodent studies, where examining six main targets, including liver and kidney, was sufficient to predict the guideline scope-based PoD with high probability. The ivTB comprises human in vitro models representing liver, kidney, lung, and the neuronal system covering transcriptome, mitochondrial dysfunction, and neuronal outgrowth. Additionally, 32 CALUXR- and 10 HepG2 BAC-GFP reporters cover a broad range of disturbance mechanisms. Eight compounds were chosen for causing adverse effects such as immunotoxicity or anemia in vivo, i.e., effects not directly covered by assays in the ivTB. PoDs derived from the ivTB and from oral repeated dose studies in rodents were extrapolated to maximum unbound plasma concentrations for comparison. The ivTB-based PoDs were one to five orders of magnitude lower than in vivo PoDs for six of eight compounds, implying that they were protective. The extent of in vitro response varied across test compounds. Especially for hematotoxic substances, the ivTB showed either no response or only cytotoxicity. Assays better capturing this type of hazard would be needed to complement the ivTB. This study highlights the potentially broad applicability of ivTBs for deriving protective PoDs of compounds with unknown MoA.