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Genomics and its role in Cancer Risk Assessment
Citation:
DELLARCO, V. AND D. WOLF. Genomics and its role in Cancer Risk Assessment. Chapter 22, Ching-Hung Hsu and Todd Stedeford (ed.), Cancer Risk Assessment: Chemical Carcinogenesis, Hazard Evaluation, and Risk Quantification. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, , 586-595, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
This chapter discusses the assumptions that lead to the center of debate with genomics and its role in cancer risk assessment
Description:
The traditional risk assessment paradigm is based on exposure - dose - response. The individual is exposed to a chemical or other stressor at some dose and a response in the organism or tissue is elicited. Though precursor events such as taret cell proliferation may be used as the response in place of a frank effect such as tumors, the rodent cancer bioassay has formed the basis for health risk assessment and regulatory decisions for several decades. Several extrapolations or inference methods are necessary when using the results of this laboratory animal model to predict human health consequences. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, it is typically assumed that rodent data predict responses in humans and findings at high experimental doses predict effects at environmental exposure levels. It is also assumed, when there are no data to the contrary, that effects in young adult animals predict responses for other life states. These assumptions have been the center of intense discussion and debate.
