Summary Table by Target Organ of National Cancer Institute/National Toxicology Program Bioassays

This table reports results from NCI/NTP bioassays on target organs evaluated as “carcinogenic” by NCI or as “clear” or “some” evidence of carcinogenic activity by NTP. An NCI evaluation that a site was “associated” with compound administration or an NTP evaluation of “equivocal” is not included in the table. The table is organized alphabetically by target site and within each site, by species and chemical.

A chemical is listed under each target organ that has been evaluated as a target site of carcinogenicity by NCI/NTP. Therefore, a chemical may be listed under several target organs and every chemical listed in the table is positive in at least one species. In order to compare results in rats and mice, superscripts follow chemicals tested in both species, which is the usual experimental design.

Purposes of this target organ compendium are:

For many research issues in carcinogenesis it is valuable to have quick access to a list of NCI/NTP chemicals that have been found to induce tumors at each target site in rats or mice.
Comparison of target sites is possible for work on interspecies extrapolation. Investigations of chemical structure or mechanism of carcinogenesis at a specific target site can identify chemicals that induce tumors in that organ.
Comparative toxicological analyses are facilitated by indicating in the table whether a chemical that is positive at a given site in the rat has been tested in the mouse, whether results are also positive in the mouse, and whether the target organs are the same in the two species. By cross-referencing a chemical of interest to the plots of the CPDB, details of each experiment can be obtained.

View the current NCI/NTP target organ table.

Example: adrenal gland, which is the first of 32 target sites in the table.


Target site	Species	N	Chemicals that induce tumors at each site
Adrenal gland	Mouse	7	Furan^‡; 4,4´-Methylenedianiline.2HCl^‡; Pentachloroanisole^‡; 2,3,4,5,6-Pentachlorophenol (Dowicide EC-7); 2,3,4,5,6-Pentachlorophenol, technical grade; p-Rosaniline.HCl^‡; 1,1,2-Trichloroethane^†
	Rat	11	Bromoethane^‡; 4-Chloro-m-phenylenediamine^‡; Cobalt sulfate heptahydrate^‡; 1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane^‡; 2-Mercaptobenzothiazole^†; Mirex; Pentachloroanisole^‡; Phenolphthalein^‡; C.I. pigment red 3^‡; Reserpine^‡; Stoddard solvent IIC^†

Under adrenal gland, 7 chemicals are listed in mice, and 10 in rats. If a chemical name is followed by a superscript (either † or ‡), this indicates that both rats and mice were both tested by NCI/NTP, e.g., under adrenal gland in rats 1,1,2-trichloroethane but not 2,3,4,5,6-pentachlorophenol, has a superscript. Since 2,3,4,5,6-pentachlorophenol has no superscript, NTP tested only mice. The superscript † for 1,1,2-trichloroethane, indicates that NTP tested both rats and mice but tumors were induced only in mice. The vast proportion of NCI/NTP bioassays include tests in rats and mice. The superscript ‡ for 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP) indicates that DBCP is carcinogenic at some target site in both rats and mice. Although the superscript ‡ does not indicate whether DBCP induced tumors at the same target site in an NTP test in both rats and mice, this can easily be determined by looking at mice under adrenal gland for the chemical name DBCP. Since it is not there, DBCP induced tumors in mice in the NCI/NTP bioassays only at sites other than the adrenal gland. In contrast, pentachloroanisole^‡ induced adrenal tumors in both species, since it is listed under that site for both species. By comparing the chemicals with superscripts listed under each species, the reader can determine that pentachloroanisole is the only chemical that induced adrenal tumors in both rats and mice. The superscripts † and ‡ apply only to results in rats and mice.

See also Summary Table by Target Organ for all positive chemicals in the CPDB.

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Last updated: August 6, 2007