Use of the alkaline in vivo Comet assay for mechanistic genotoxicity investigations

The alkaline Comet assay was used to investigate the in vivo genotoxicity of 17 compounds. Altogether 21 studies were conducted with these compounds. The investigations were triggered for various reasons. The main reason for performing the studies was to evaluate the in vivo relevance of in vitro genotoxicity findings with 10 compounds. Eight of these compounds showed no effects in the in vivo Comet assay while two compounds induced altered DNA migration patterns in specific organs. The remaining seven compounds were tested to follow up on neoplastic/preneoplastic or chronic toxicity changes as detected in specific target organs identified in rodent studies, to investigate the possibility of site-of-contact genotoxicity and to test the liver as a target organ for a suspected reactive metabolite. For the studies, various organs of rodents were analyzed, depending on the suspected properties of the compounds, including liver, jejunum, leukocytes, stomach mucosa, duodenum, lung and kidney. All tissues were amenable to investigation by gel electrophoresis after simple disaggregation of organs by means of mincing or, in the case of epithelial cells from the gastrointestinal tract, scraping off cells from the epithelium. In conclusion, the Comet assay was found to be a reliable and robust test to investigate in vivo genotoxicity in a variety of rodent organs. Therefore, it is concluded that in vivo Comet assay data are useful for elucidating positive in vitro genotoxicity findings and to evaluate genotoxicity in target organs of toxicity.