Evidence for delayed cytotoxicity effects following exposure of rat hepatoma-derived Fa32 cells: implications for predicting human acute toxicity

The delayed cytotoxicity of the Multicentre Evaluation of In vitro Cytotoxicity (MEIC) reference chemicals was investigated in rat hepatoma-derived Fa32 cells. The cells were treated for 24 h with the test chemicals, and were than further cultured for 5 days in normal culture medium. The cytotoxicity was measured by the neutral red uptake inhibition, and the results were quantified by determining the NI50del. This is the concentration of test compound required to decrease the neutral red uptake with 50% compared with control cells. The results were compared with the acute NI50, the corresponding value measured immediately after 24 h treatment of the cells. On a total of 44 chemicals, nine showed delayed cytotoxicity (NI50del lower than or equal to NI50), 11 a probably delayed, and 24 no delayed cytotoxicity (NI50del more than 1.5×NI50). When the NI50del was compared with human toxicity, a correlation coefficient r²⁼0.761 was obtained. For the same series of 44 chemicals this correlation was clearly higher than that for human hepatoma-derived Hep G2 cells (r²=0.695). The Hep G2 assay was the best acute in vitro assay for the prediction of human toxicity within the MEIC study. Consequently, the delayed cytotoxicity assay on cultured Fa32 cells has the best prediction value so far obtained for the human toxicity.