We show that complex affine toric surfaces are determined by the abstract group structure of their regular automorphism groups in the category of complex normal affine surfaces using properties of the Cremona group. As a generalization to arbitrary dimensions, we show that complex affine toric varieties, with the exception of the algebraic torus, are uniquely determined in the category of complex affine normal varieties by their automorphism groups seen as ind-groups. This is a joint work with Andriy Regeta and Christian Urech.