Irritancy testing in cultured keratinocytes.

A differentiating keratinocyte cell line derived from explant cultures of rat sublingual epithelium has been used as a potential in vitro model for topical (skin) irritation of a range of detergents. The end points used to assess toxicity were acid phosphatase (AP) activity after 4 h of dosing and neutral red (NR) uptake and kenacid blue (KB) staining after 3 d to assess cell viability and number. The acid phosphatase activity increased to a sharp peak with increasing doses, then fell equally sharply for the anionic detergent sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and cationic detergents TMABs (trimethylammonium bromides). With the Tweens (the least toxic group) there was no acid phosphatase peak or it appeared at the highest dose level used (1.0 mg/ml). The dose-response curves for NR uptake paralleled those for KB staining. With all of the three end points, it was apparent that the order of toxicity for the different groups was TMABs greater than SDS greater than Tweens, with a difference of one order of magnitude between consecutive groups when using NR and KB.