New to TOXNET: Carcinogenic Potency Database

TOXNET
TOXNET
, a collection of toxicology and environmental health databases, recently included a new resource, the Carcinogenic Potency Database (CPDB), developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The information contained in the CPDB can be useful for completing cancer risk assessments.

CPDB provides:

  • access to results on 1,547 chemicals from 6,540 chronic, long-term animal cancer tests, conducted since the 1950s
  • for each experiment, information on the species, strain, and gender of the test animal
  • protocol features such as dose duration, administration route, dose level and experiment duration
  • analyses of dose-response curve shape, carcinogenic potency, and statistical significance
  • experimental results including tumor type, tumor incidence, and target organ
  • author’s opinion as to the chemical’s carcinogenicity, and literature citations

The CPDB reports on animal cancer tests that are both positive and negative for carcinogenicity and standardizes the assorted literature of animal cancer tests that have been published in the general literature or reported by the National Cancer Institute and the National Toxicology Program.

The CPDB can be searched as a part of TOXNET, or independently, by chemical name or Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number (RN). Supplemental information regarding CPDB can be found on Berkeley’s Carcinogenic Potency Project’s homepage.

~ Carolyn Biglow

Posted in the 2008 Issue