(190m) OpenTox: In Silico Toxicity Prediction for Chemical Safety

The European Union (EU) chemical legislation REACH* requires that chemicals imported into or manufactured in the EU must be registered with safety information, from  December 2010.  It has been estimated that over 9 million additional test animals will be required to address the registration requirements of REACH, if no alternative methods are accepted. In particular, chronic and reproductive toxicity, in vivo mutagenicity, and carcinogenicity endpoints require the largest number of test animals within REACH, as no alternative in vitro assays are available. However, the number of test animals could be significantly reduced by utilizing existing experimental data in conjunction with Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) models, as part of the weight of evidence.  

To address the challenge, the European Commission has funded the OpenTox (www.OpenTox.org) project to develop an open source framework, that provides in silico models including QSAR, validation/reporting procedures, and unified access to experimental toxicity data. Also, end-user applications are being developed for model development/validation, toxicity prediction, reporting and analyses, and unified data access, for use by Toxicologists, Biologists, Chemists and Computational Scientists.  

An overview of the progress and accomplishments of this 3-year European-funded OpenTox project will be presented.  

*http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm