Advisory Group Recommendations on Priorities for the IARC Monographs [2024]

Details

• Personal Author:
  Ahmadi A ; Barouki R ; Barros SBM ; Barupal D ; Beane Freeman LE ; Benbrahim-Tallaa L ; Berrington de González A ; Bhatti P ; Calaf GM ; Chittiboyina S ; de Conti A ; Dillner J ; El Rhazi K ; Facchin C ; Fortner RT ; Fritschi L ; Fukushima S ; Godderis L ; Herceg Z ; Kogevinas M ; Kulasingam S ; Lachenmeier DW ; Lauby-Secretan B ; MacLehose R ; Madia F ; Mandrioli D ; Masten SA ; Mattock H ; Muchengeti MM ; Niemeier, R. Todd ; Pappas JJ ; Pasqual E ; Peters S ; Pi J ; Purdue MP ; Riboli E ; Rodríguez T ; Sanaa M ; Santonen T ; Schlünssen V ; Schubauer-Berigan, Mary K. ; Schüz J ; Suonio E ; Wedekind R ; Yakubovskaya MG ; Zavadil J
• Description:
  In March, 2024, an Advisory Group of 28 independent scientists from 22 countries met in Lyon, France to recommend priorities for carcinogenicity evaluations by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs programme during 2025-29. IARC periodically convenes such advisory groups to ensure that the agents evaluated in the Monographs are selected on the basis of the latest scientific evidence relevant to carcinogenicity. A detailed report of the Advisory Group recommendations will be published in due course. The Advisory Group assessed the response to a public call for nominations and considered more than 200 candidate agents, including the recommended priority agents remaining from a similar Advisory Group meeting convened in 2019. The Advisory Group comprised scientists with expertise across the spectrum of topics relevant to carcinogenicity. In drawing their conclusions, the members appraised, for each nominated agent, the evidence regarding human exposure, cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals, and carcinogen mechanisms according to precepts described in the Preamble to the IARC Monographs. Systematic literature searches were complemented by a text mining and database fusion approach to identify relevant studies, document the relative abundance of literature for the different evidence streams, and map chemical similarity in support of decisions on prioritisation for individual agents and groups of agents. To develop its priority recommendations, the Advisory Group deliberated on all nominated agents by both evidence stream (ie, human exposure, cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals, and mechanistic evidence in humans and experimental systems) and type of agent (eg, infectious agents, biotoxins, complex exposures, occupations, particles and fibres, metals, pharmaceuticals, physical agents, pesticides, and a variety of miscellaneous chemicals). Priority was assigned based on (a) evidence that there is contemporary human exposure (whether widespread or more narrow) and (b) the extent to which available evidence on carcinogenicity from each stream could support a new or updated evaluation according to the Preamble to the IARC Monographs. Any of the three evidence streams alone could support prioritisation of agents with no previous evaluation. For previously evaluated agents, the Advisory Group considered the basis of the current classification and the potential impact of the newly available evidence during integration across streams (see table 4 in the Preamble to the IARC Monographs). The Advisory Group recommended a broad range of agents for evaluation with high (table 1) or medium (table 2) priority. Other agents were assigned no priority for evaluation (table 3). The Advisory Group particularly noted that the Monographs programme has not conducted an evaluation of pesticides since 2015, or of infectious agents since 2012; as a result, many high-priority recommendations (19 and ten, respectively) have accrued in these categories. Noting that suggestive evidence for additional cancer sites was found for all ten nominated agents currently classified in Group 1 (table 1), the Advisory Group considered a systematic appraisal of all 128 Group 1 agents to identify new cancer sites with 'sufficient' or 'limited' evidence to be warranted. The Advisory Group further recommended that agents may merit priority consideration if compelling evidence indicating an emerging carcinogenic hazard (eg, from cancer epidemiology studies, cancer bioassays, or mechanistic studies on key characteristics of carcinogens) becomes available in the next 5 years. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Carcinogens Neoplasms Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Cancer Carcinogenicity Carcinogen Policy Recommendations
• ISSN:
  1470-2045
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSI - Division of Science Integration
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  25
• Issue:
  5
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20069561
• Citation:
  Lancet Oncol 2024 May; 25(5):546-548
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2024
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:1ee2ea3c716b8ae8dcd92fe6c1643db1b69decd4d3c83da6c6039bfe004a9e7d5d465126bb828d35b3e7525c51b5314258b1e0a5d8132fb9a8c62decca4e85c3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/207974/cdc_207974_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 145.31 KB ]