CARCINOGENOME

Exposure to environmental chemicals is known to play a significant role in carcinogenesis. While some chemicals are well-known carcinogens, only a small fraction of those in commercial use and to which the human population is exposed has undergone thorough carcinogenicity testing.Furthermore, many of the biological mechanisms of actions of chemical carcinogens are poorly understood. The current gold standard for chemical carcinogenicity testing is the 2-year rat bioassay, which is expensive and time-consuming, and its relevance to human carcinogenesis has been questioned. To date, about 1500 chemicals have been tested for long-term carcinogenicity in rodent models by this approach, out of the 85,000 chemicals used in common household products or industrial settings. We aim to develop a fast and scalable approach to carcinogenicity screening, one that takes advantage of short-term chemical exposures in human cell lines and high-throughput gene expression profiling. This approach will..