Mode of Action Approaches

The mode of action (MoA) approach seeks to gain an understanding of the key events along a causal pathway that lead to a toxicological endpoint. Extensive reviews of MoA examples exist in the literature [18,19,20]. Additionally, The International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) has published Human Relevance Frameworks [21, 22], a process that incorporates a weight of evidence approach relying heavily on robust mechanistic and experimental data. The evaluation sequence is listed below as a series of questions. 

Is there sufficient evidence to conclude that a MoA has been established in animals  

Are there fundamental differences between the experimental systems and humans that would make it unlikely that the toxicity would occur in humans  

Assuming that the key events are plausible in humans, are there quantitative differences in either kinetics or dynamics that would indicate a differential sensitivity in humans  

To what extent do any quantitative differences in the key events impact selection of dose-response approaches and uncertainty factors used to estimate margins of safety This is a key question in designing new methods and screening studies to supplement retrospective data or fill data gaps. 

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Hernandez LG, van Benthem J, Johnson GE (2013) A mode-of-action approach for the identification of genotoxic carcinogens. PLoS One 8 e64532... 

Mennecozzi M, Landesmann B, Harris G, Liska R, Whelan MP (2012) Hepatotoxicity screening taking a mode of action approach using HepaRG cells and HCA. In ALTEX proceedings 2012 1/12, pp 193-204... 

Biorational approaches have proven useful in the development of classes of herbicides which inhibit essential metaboHc pathways common to all plants and thus are specific to plants and have low toxicity to mammalian species. Biorational herbicide development remains a high risk endeavor since promising high activities observed in the laboratory may be nullified by factors such as limitations in plant uptake and translocation, and the instabiHty or inactivity of biochemical en2yme inhibitors under the harsher environmental conditions in the field. Despite these recogni2ed drawbacks, biorational design of herbicides has shown sufficient potential to make the study of herbicide modes of action an important and growing research area. 

Another interesting approach to obtaining potent, broad-spectmm activity has been reported (127). The "dual-action" antibacterial concept involves incorporation of two moieties having complimentary antibacterial modes of action into the same molecule, and uses the mode of action of one part to release the second antibacterial at the site of action. This approach is exemplified in Ro 23—9424 (47) (127), which uses the mode of action and reactivity of the cephalosporin moiety (Fig. 2) to release the quinolone portion. 

Azinomycins A and B (64 and 65 Scheme 11.5) [115, 116] were isolated in 1986 from Streptomyces griseofuscus at the SS pharmaceutical company in Japan and were found to have potent in vitro cytotoxicities [117] and to display significant in vivo antitumor activity [118]. Since their discovery [117] and structure determination [119], their unusual molecular framework has attracted the attention of many chemists interested in their mode of action and in developing synthetic approaches to them [115,116]. The first total synthesis of azinomycin A was achieved in 2000 by Coleman et al. [120]. 

A crucial issue for antiviral therapy is the fact that all antiviral substances rapidly select for resistance thus, monitoring and overcoming resistance has become a most important clinical paradigm of antiviral therapy. This calls for cautious use of antiviral drugs and implementation of combination therapies. In parallel, efforts in drug discovery have to be continued to develop compounds with novel mode-of-action and activity against resistant strains. This book reviews the current status of antiviral therapy, from the roads to development of new compounds to their clinical use and cost effectiveness. Individual chapters address in more detail all available drug classes and outline new approaches currently under development. 

Apart from mode of action and kinetics of wild type enzymes structure function relationships of these industrially important enzymes is of high interest to provide the necessary knowledge for genetic engineering of desired properties. As a first approach the identification of catalytically important residues was addressed in conjunction with the elucidation of the three dimensional structure [15]. 

Separation-based assays are preferred in many applications because they allow discrimination of signals due to substrate, product, and interference. When assays that involve fluorescence detection are developed, they are typically carried out by employing plate readers. When separation-based methods are employed for these applications, the influences of interferences (quenchers and other fluorescent compounds) on the final results are minimized because both substrate and product are quantified. With a separation-based approach, the label employed does not need to be placed in close proximity to the site of action of the enzyme, therefore minimizing the effect of the label on the mode of action of the enzyme. Of course, it is often desirable to develop assays that employ substrates free of labels. 

For the derivation of the PNEC several approaches have been proposed. Generally these can be categorised into three distinct assessments a conservative, a distributional, and a mixture toxicity approach. In conservative approaches, usually the most (realistic) sensitive endpoint such as LC50 or the known no observed effect concentration (NOEC) is taken and divided by an uncertainty factor (10-100). The selected uncertainty factor value depends on the type of endpoint and the number of available data, and is applied to account for laboratory to field extrapolations, species differences in sensitivities, and similar uncertainties. In distributional approaches, a series of, or all available, literature data are taken and a selected cut-off value is applied to the distribution of these data. The cut-off value may be, e.g., the concentration value that will protect 95% of the species (tested). In general, again an uncertainty factor (usually of 10) is then applied to take into account species differences. In the mixture toxicity approach, a similar mode of action is assumed for the assessment of the combined (additive) effect of the mixture. All relevant mixture components are scaled relative to the most potent one. This results in relative potencies for each component. The total effect of the mixture is then evaluated by... 

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