Identifying chemicals based on receptor binding/bioactivation/mechanistic explanation associated with potential to elicit hepatotoxicity and to support structure activity relationship-based read-across

The liver is the most common target organ in toxicology studies. The development of chemical structural alerts for identifying hepatotoxicity will play an important role in in silico model prediction and help strengthen the identification of analogs used in structure activity relationship (SAR)- based read-across. The aim of the current study is development of an SAR-based expert-system decision tree for screening of hepatotoxicants across a wide range of chemistry space and proposed modes of action for clustering of chemicals using defined core chemical categories based on receptor-binding or bioactivation. The decision tree is based on ∼ 1180 different chemicals that were reviewed for hepatotoxicity information. Knowledge of chemical receptor binding, metabolism and mechanistic information were used to group these chemicals into 16 different categories and 102 subcategories: four categories describe binders to 9 different receptors, 11 categories are associated with possible reactive metabolites (RMs) and there is one miscellaneous category. Each chemical subcategory has been associated with possible modes of action (MOAs) or similar key structural features. This decision tree can help to screen potential liver toxicants associated with core structural alerts of receptor binding and/or RMs and be used as a component of weight of evidence decisions based on SAR read-across, and to fill data gaps.