An Integrated European ‘Flagship’ Programme Driving Mechanism-based Toxicity Testing and Risk Assessment for the 21st century
The vision of EU-ToxRisk was to drive the required paradigm shift in toxicological testing away from ‘black box’ animal testing towards a toxicological assessment based on human cell responses and a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of cause-consequence relationships of chemical adverse effects.
EU-ToxRisk has integrated advancements in cell biology, omics technologies, systems biology and computational modelling to define the complex chains of events that link chemical exposure to toxic outcome. The consortium provided proof of concept for such a mechanism-based chemical safety testing strategy.
This project was focused on two areas: repeated dose systemic toxicity, using the lung, kidney, liver and nervous system as examples of potential target organs; and developmental and reproductive toxicity. It also provided guidance for its universal application, allowing to push the entire field forward in an integrated manner. The ultimate goal was to deliver testing strategies to enable reliable, animal-free hazard and risk assessment of chemicals.
The UPF participated in this project as leader of the computational methods workpackage, including the application of read-accross, QSAR models, and machine-learning methods.
More information about the EU-ToxRisk project can be found here http://www.eu-toxrisk.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 681002.
