A novel approach: chemical relational databases, and the role of the ISSCAN database on assessing chemical carcinogenicity.

Mutagenicity and carcinogenicity databases are crucial resources for toxicologists and regulators involved in chemicals risk assessment. Until recently, existing public toxicity databases have been constructed primarily as "look-up-tables" of existing data, and most often did not contain chemical structures. Concepts and technologies originated from the structure-activity relationships science have provided powerful tools to create new types of databases, where the effective linkage of chemical toxicity with chemical structure can facilitate and greatly enhance data gathering and hypothesis generation, by permitting: a) exploration across both chemical and biological domains; and b) structure-searchability through the data. This paper reviews the main public databases, together with the progress in the field of chemical relational databases, and presents the ISSCAN database on experimental chemical carcinogens.