Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
The future of toxicology will depend on how well cutting-edge technology is transferred and integrated to solve problems in toxicology. Toxicity testing is poised to take advantage of the revolutions in biology and biotechnology. In 2007, the National Research Council of the US National Academies published a report, entitled Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, which advocates the use of these new technologies to transform toxicity testing from a system based on whole-animal testing to one founded mainly on in vitro methods that evaluate changes in biologic processes using cells, cell lines, or cellular components, preferably of human origin. This report concluded that a transformative paradigm shift was needed to confront the many issues faced in the toxicity testing of environmental chemicals, drugs, and cosmetics to which humans are exposed. Toxicity testing, as envisioned by this NAS report, involved the interplay of toxicity pathways, targeted testing, chemical characterization, dose-response and extrapolation modeling, population and exposure data, and risk assessment. This lecture will present key elements of this report, along with selected examples of studies and discussions in the scientific literature, which evaluate new approaches in toxicity testing.
