Procedures available to examine the immunotoxicity of chemicals and drugs.

The discipline of immunology should provide toxicology with sensitive models to assess toxicity as well as provide better safety assessment. More information on correlations between immune function and host resistance changes and a more standardized panel of methods for immunotoxicity screening will add further credence to the already impressive immunotoxicology data base. Research efforts are needed to evaluate newer in vitro methods with microsome activation systems to screen chemicals for immunotoxicity, to evaluate chemicals for induction of hypersensitization or allergy, and to better determine whether there are chemical structure activity relationships for chemically induced immunotoxicity. The studies described here represent preliminary examples of these approaches.