Chen Guangchao, Peijnenburg Willie, Xiao Yinlong, Vijver Martina G
Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Centre for Safety of Substances and Products, National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
Int J Mol Sci. 2017 Jul 12;18(7):1504. doi: 10.3390/ijms18071504.
As listed by the European Chemicals Agency, the three elements in evaluating the hazards of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) include the integration and evaluation of toxicity data, categorization and labeling of ENMs, and derivation of hazard threshold levels for human health and the environment. Assessing the hazards of ENMs solely based on laboratory tests is time-consuming, resource intensive, and constrained by ethical considerations. The adoption of computational toxicology into this task has recently become a priority. Alternative approaches such as (quantitative) structure-activity relationships ((Q)SAR) and read-across are of significant help in predicting nanotoxicity and filling data gaps, and in classifying the hazards of ENMs to individual species. Thereupon, the species sensitivity distribution (SSD) approach is able to serve the establishment of ENM hazard thresholds sufficiently protecting the ecosystem. This article critically reviews the current knowledge on the development of in silico models in predicting and classifying the hazard of metallic ENMs, and the development of SSDs for metallic ENMs. Further discussion includes the significance of well-curated experimental datasets and the interpretation of toxicity mechanisms of metallic ENMs based on reported models. An outlook is also given on future directions of research in this frontier.
根据欧洲化学品管理局的规定,评估工程纳米材料(ENM)危害的三个要素包括毒性数据的整合与评估、ENM的分类与标签以及推导对人类健康和环境的危害阈值水平。仅基于实验室测试来评估ENM的危害既耗时、资源密集,又受到伦理考量的限制。最近,将计算毒理学应用于这项任务已成为优先事项。诸如(定量)构效关系((Q)SAR)和类推法等替代方法在预测纳米毒性、填补数据空白以及对ENM对单个物种的危害进行分类方面有很大帮助。因此,物种敏感度分布(SSD)方法能够为建立充分保护生态系统的ENM危害阈值提供支持。本文批判性地综述了有关用于预测和分类金属ENM危害的计算机模拟模型的发展以及金属ENM的SSD发展的现有知识。进一步的讨论包括精心整理的实验数据集的重要性以及基于报告模型对金属ENM毒性机制的解释。此外,还展望了这一前沿领域未来的研究方向。