Biological Reactive Intermediates—II

About this book

In the summer of 1975 a small group of toxicologists, pathologists, biochemists and other scientists with closely related interests met at the University of Turku in Finland for two days to discuss what was, at that time, the rapidly emerging field of biological reactive intermediates. Biological reactive intermediates are the metabolic products of Xenobiotics chemicals which are chemically highly reactive and which appear to be largely responsible for the toxic and carcinogenic effects attributed to the parent compound. Furthermore, these effects are thought to be mediated by the covalent binding of reactive metabolites to critical cellular macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. From the two days of intensive discussion at Turku came the first written report in this series (BIOLOGICAL REACTIVE INTERMEDIATES: FORMATION, TOXICITY AND INACTIVATION, D.J. Jollow, J.J. Kocsis, R. Snyder and H. Vainio, eds., Plenum Publishing Co., New York, 1977). Although the concepts of covalent binding and the adverse effects that may ensue were first proposed many years ago, the field developed rapidly during the early 1970's, mainly through the efforts of Professors E.C. and J.A. Miller…