International Commission for Protection Against Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens. Approaches to SAR in carcinogenesis and mutagenesis. Prediction of carcinogenicity/mutagenicity using MULTI-CASE.

The assumptions and considerations underlying the use of structure-activity studies in the field of genotoxicity are discussed and reviewed. The MULTI-CASE program, recently introduced as a second generation CASE program is described and its special features highlighted. Some of the problems relevant to the use of structure-activity tools are also discussed. A list of these problems is as follows: Problems with non-congeneric data bases, Problems with expert systems, Problems with the size of the data bases, Problems with "structural alerts", Problems with QSAR, Problems with Metabolic transformations, and Problems with short-term assays.