COLIPA validation project on in vitro eye irritation tests for cosmetic ingredients and finished products (phase I): the red blood cell test for the estimation of acute eye irritation potentials. Present status.

The red blood cell test (RBC test) is part of the COLIPA Validation Project on Alternatives to Draize Eye Irritation. It shows good intra- and interlaboratory reproducibility (reliability) and represents one of the promising in vitro alternatives of this project with a good fit to prediction models (relevance) for the assessment of acute ocular irritancy caused by certain classes of chemicals (mainly surfactants) and formulations. Results obtained during the period of test development, prevalidation, and validation are summarized. The method is based on that of Pape et al. (1987), Pape and Hoppe (1990) and Lewis et al. (1993). The protocol has two endpoints: cellular lysis and changes in protein conformation which can be correlated with initial events in tissue injury inducing inflammatory responses as assessed by Draize eye irritation scoring. Both endpoints are detected by spectrophotometric changes in the haemoglobin absorption at 541nm. The protocol also includes a set of prediction models (PM). One PM is designed to predict three classes of irritancy (classification model) based on both endpoints and the three other PMs are designed to predict modified maximum average scores (MMAS) by algorithms based on data from cellular lysis only. These three PMs [with prediction intervals (PIs)] are: (i) for surfactant ingredients, (ii) for surfactant containing finished products, and (iii) for both groups together. The three PMs are based on a common algorithm derived from historic data. It is shown that PMs derived from historic data from several laboratories, by the same procedure, also produce a good fit with the presented data. Therefore, participating laboratories concluded that the protocol as used in this formal validation study can be considered to be validated for the estimation of acute eye irritation potential of surfactant-containing finished products.