Mitogenic activity of quinoline to the rat, mouse, and guinea pig liver: empirical correlations with hepatic carcinogenicity.

Previous studies have shown that the rat liver carcinogen quinoline is essentially nongenotoxic to the rat liver in vivo. Those studies also established it as a potent mitogen to rat liver. The present experiments have established quinoline as a mitogen to the mouse liver, a tissue in which it is also reported to be carcinogenic. In contrast, quinoline is reported to be noncarcinogenic to the guinea pig liver, and the present data establish it to be essentially nonmitogenic to the guinea pig liver. It is concluded that the mitogenicity of quinoline correlates better with its hepatocarcinogenic properties than does its genotoxicity in vivo.