ASSURING SAFETY WITHOUT ANIMAL TESTING: DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF DENDRITIC CELL ACTIVATION RESPONSE TO CHEMICAL SENSITISERS.

• TR Number: 675
• Authors: Jones1, P., White1, A., Fletcher1, S., Castle1, K., Ayehunie2, S., and Lim3, F-L. 1Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook, Bedford, MK44 1LQ, UK, 2Mattek Corporation, 200 Homer Avenue, Ashland, MA, 01721, USA, 3Discover, Unilever, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook, Bedford, MK44 1LQ, UK
• Materials Tested: 1-bromobutane, 6-methylcoumarin, Benzoquinone, DNCB, Formaldehyde, Glutaraldehyde, Glycerol, Hydroquinone, Saccharine sodium salt hydrate, Sodium dodecyl sulphate

Assuring consumer safety without the generation of new animal data is currently a considerable challenge but one that we believe is ultimately achievable. Skin allergy (sensitisation) is an important consumer safety endpoint for home and personal care products and an endpoint where animal data (e.g. mouse local lymph node assay data) are often needed to inform risk assessments. We are investigating a number of in vitro approaches to model key events in the biology of skin sensitisation including dendritic cell activation. In this study, transcriptomic analysis was used to examine the ability of a dendritic cell (DC) activation model using cultured DCs (Mattek DC-100), derived from CD34+ progenitor cells, to differentiate between sensitisers and non-sensitisers.