EBTC Project Tests if Fish Embryos Can Simplify Pre-natal Developmental Toxicity (Chemical Watch)
Excerpt:
US Scientists are investigating whether pre-natal developmental toxicity (PNDT) testing for regulatory hazard assessment could be radically simplified through use of fish embryos. The hope is that a zebrafish embryo test (ZET) can be used to meet existing requirements for PNDT data for a second species, leading to significant reductions in cost, time and vertebrate animal use.
Researchers from academia, industry, and NGOs will carry out a systematic review of the evidence, comparing the ZET with the standard, rodent, PNDT study, described by OECD test guideline (TG) 414. "Substantial but poorly understood" differences in species have led to OECD 414 being carried out on both rats and rabbits, say the researchers. However, while there are a number of in vitro and ex vivo tests for developmental toxicity, no one test or combination of tests can yet substitute fully for the guideline one, they add.
Zebrafish are model vertebrate organisms but tests on embryos are widely considered a replacement for animal experiments. The embryos do not come under regulatory frameworks dealing with animal experimentation, largely because tests are done before independent feeding begins. The ZET also has the benefit of being rapid to perform and relatively cheap.
Coordinated by the Evidence-based Toxicology Collaboration (EBTC) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US, the team has worked on the review protocol and study since 2012. It originally ran a pilot study on several chemicals with ZET data, including thalidomide, before it refined its review protocol.
The team then reviewed full texts of over 900 ZET papers, eventually including 342 published studies on 1400 chemicals. The group is currently working through batches of the chemicals in its search for mammalian papers.
"It's just physically impossible for that number of chemicals to be incorporated all at once into the mammalian literature search strategy," explains EBTC's director Katya Tsaioun.
Dr Tsaioun awaits the results with an open mind. "If the animal tests are useful in protecting human health and there is nothing else available, they should be used. But if there are other technologies that are cheaper, more predictive, faster, and pointing to specific mechanisms of human toxicity which the animal tests do not detect, then they should be incorporated into the regulatory paradigm," she says.
Full Article at Chemical Watch
Meeting on Internationalization of Read-across as Validated New Approach Method for Regulatory Toxicology Held in Italy July 16-18th
This workshop, co-organized by CAAT-Europe and EU-ToxRisk, was held on July 16-18th in Ranco, Italy. More than 20 read-across international experts from regulatory agencies (e.g. EURL-ECVAM, EFSA, NIH, OECD), industry, and academia met to discuss the steps necessary to make read-across more consistent and standardized and the road-map to follow for expanding the use and acceptance of the read-across to international regulatory agencies.
FutureTox IV
November 14-16, 2018
Westin Crystal City, Arlington, VA
CAAT's Thomas Hartung has a talk on day two.
FutureTox IV Progress to Maturity: Predictive Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology for Healthy Children is focused on bringing together basic, clinical, and regulatory scientists to bridge the translation from historical approaches to Tox21 implementation relative to risk assessment and regulatory decision-making for matters pertaining to developmental health, lifestage progression, and the human reproductive cycle. The meeting also will look at implementing the 21st-century vision and regulatory considerations relevant to commercial chemicals in the environment and medical products for guidance based on new results.
The FutureTox series focuses on building the road for 21st-century toxicology and risk assessment practices, utilizing in vitro data and in silico models for predictive toxicology, and taking the high-throughput risk assessment paradigm forward to address challenges in implementing the emerging big-data toolbox for risk assessment and regulatory decision-making.
Website: https://www.toxicology.org/events/shm/cct/FutureToxIV.asp
Abstract Deadline: Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Cat-App Final Workshop
September 6, 2018
Brussels
CAAT's Thomas Hartung will be giving a talk on
Read-across Initiatives to Replace Animal Testing.
The overall objective of the multi-year, transatlantic Cat-App research consortium was to develop a framework supporting the Concawe strategy for human health assessment of complex petroleum substances to meet the regulatory requirements under the REACH legislation. Petroleum substances are prototypical examples of UVCB2 materials, which are a particular challenge for science-informed regulatory decision making: given the complexity of these products, current alternative strategies provided in specific regulations, mainly focusing on read across approaches, cannot be applied to petroleum UVCBs. In addition, taking animal welfare considerations, time and testing cost into account, it is practically unfeasible to address hundreds of petroleum products with conventional toxicological guideline studies in animals.
The Cat-App framework aims to address this, by applying state of the art technical, statistical and transparent data communication methods to make best use of all available data in an integrative way—facilitating chemical-biological grouping and read across of these and other complex substances.
Join us on 6th September for the presentation of the final results and to discuss the practical application of these data with various interested stakeholders from academia, industry and regulatory bodies.
Details
The 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences
August 23-27, 2020
Maastricht—The Netherlands
More information:
http://wc11maastricht.org/
Best wishes from all of us,
The CAAT Team
