Classification or non-classification of substances with positive tumor findings in animal studies: Guidance by the German MAK commission.

One of the important tasks of the German Senate Commission for the Investigation of Health Hazards of Chemical Compounds in the Work Area (known as the MAK Commission) is in the evaluation of a potential for carcinogenicity of hazardous substances at the workplace. Often, this evaluation is critically based on data on carcinogenic responses seen in animal studies and, if positive tumor responses have been observed, this will mostly lead to a classification of the substance under investigation into one of the classes for carcinogens. However, there are cases where it can be demonstrated with a very high degree of confidence that the tumor findings in the experimental animals are not relevant for humans at the workplace and, therefore, the MAK Commission will not classify the respective substance into one of the classes for carcinogens. This paper will summarize the general criteria used by the MAK Commission for the categorization into "carcinogen" and "non-carcinogen" and compare this procedure with those used by other national and international organizations.

Human relevance of follicular thyroid tumors in rodents caused by non-genotoxic substances.

Chronic stimulation of the thyroid gland of rodents by TSH leads to thyroid follicular hyperplasia and subsequently to thyroid follicular adenomas and carcinomas. However, the interpretations of rodent thyroid tumors are contradictory. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that findings with drugs that lead to increased levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in rats are not relevant to humans, whereas the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) concluded that chemicals that produce rodent thyroid tumors may pose a carcinogenic hazard for humans although the thyroid of rodents appears to be more sensitive to a carcinogenic stimulus than that of humans. Meanwhile, based on the CLP Criteria of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), rodent thyroid tumors caused by the induction of uridine-diphosphate-glucuronosyl transferases (UDGT) were assessed as not relevant to humans. To clarify these discrepant positions, the function and regulation of the thyroid gland are described and the types of thyroid tumors and the causes of their development in humans and animals are examined. Based on these data and the evidence that so far, except radiation, no chemical is known to increase the incidence of thyroid tumors in humans, it is concluded that rodent thyroid tumors resulting from continuous stimulation of the thyroid gland by increased TSH levels are not relevant to humans. Consequently, compounds that induce such tumors do not warrant classification as carcinogenic.