Genotoxicity Screening

• Bacterial reverse mutation test (MiniAMES and full five strain AMES)
• In vitro mammalian micronucleus test (MNT)

AMES test is used to identify compounds that can cause spontaneous point mutations such as base pair substitutions, deletions or duplications. These events can ultimately lead to cancer susceptibility. MNT assay is used to detect drug candidates causing chromosomal aberrations (aneugen) or breakages (clastogen) leading to perturbations in cell division. The resulting micronuclei adjacent to main nuclei are also a sign of genotoxicity.

AMES MPF™ (Xenometrix) is a robust assay utilising 384-plate format and two strains of bacterium S. typhimurium; TA98 and TA100 from which the former detects base substitutions and latter frameshift mutations. Also, other strains of S. typhimurium and E. coli are available to conduct a full AMES with five bacterial strains. MNT assay utilises actively dividing ChoK1 cells in 96-well plate format. After exposure period the in vitro MicroFlow kit (Litron laboratories) is used to stain the micronuclei and analysis is performed by flow cytometry in a high-throughput manner.

Both genotoxicity assays of our in vitro toxicity screening service portfolio are OECD-compliant and deliver the mutagenic events / MN induction as fold-values compared to control either in presence or absence of metabolic activation (S9).