Cell-Mediated Mutagenesis, an Approach to Studying Organ Specificity of Chemical Carcinogens

We have been interested in developing in vitro systems in which the organ and species specificity of chemical carcinogens can be studied (1–6). The phenomena of species, organ, sex, and age specificity in response to chemical carcinogens pose an intriguing problem and may be important for the extrapolation of in vivo and in vitro carcinogenesis data to humans. Many carcinogens exist in the environment in nonreactive form and must be metabolically activated to manifest their biological activity (7,8).