ABSTRACT
The presence of carcinogenic substances in foods was rst reported in 1939 by a Swedish scientist, E. M. P. Widmark, at Lund University, with the nding that organic solvent extracts of roasted horse meat caused carcinogenic effect when repeatedly applied to mouse skin [1]. A short-term assay for the determination of mutagenic activity based on Salmonella strains was developed by an American scientist, Ames and his coworkers [2], and not long after, a Japanese scientist, Professor Sugimura, and his group utilized this assay to demonstrate the presence of high mutagenic activity in the charred surface of beef and sh, broiled over a naked ame or charcoal [3,4]. The formation of mutagenic activity in meat, cooking under normal domestic conditions, and even from boiling beef extracts, was reported shortly after [5]. These ndings initiated the study on heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and since then, around 25 highly mutagenic HCAs have been isolated and identied from various cooked foods, mainly protein-rich foods of animal origin [6-8]. Some of them have been classied as probable or possible human carcinogens by IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) [9]. Recently, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) has also listed some of them as reasonably anticipated human carcinogens [10,11]. Intense research relating to their formation, metabolism, and carcinogenicity has been carried out and is ongoing to evaluate the relevance of HCAs to human cancer.
