抄録
Currently, scientific term “Regulatory Science” has been appeared in scientific fields with various definitions. In Japan, the term “Regulatory Science” has been firstly introduced by Dr. M. Uchiyama, the former Director General of NIHS. At the time of 1987, he has defined that regulatory science is the scientific activities to conduct a harmonized application of the multifaceted subjects or products to human society under the proper and accurate assessing and evaluating by using the sophisticated updating sciences and technologies. His most recent definition is that the science is the research activities that support the effort of regulating and optimizing scientific and technological development according to the objectives geared toward human health. Thus, in the toxicological aspects, the targeting objectives and products by regulatory science are chemicals distributed in the human society, such as foods, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, industrial chemicals and so on.
Regulatory science on drug regulation provides a scientific basis for fitting a substance into society and to patients as a drug via the regulation process. With respect to food regulatory science, each country has their own standards in order to protect people from contaminated and unknown food ingredients. In other respect, regulatory science is not simply limited to the areas as described above, but also the science could be expanding to various areas even in the individual’s daily work.
In turn, toxicology provides scientific evidence with toxic manifestations for evaluating chemicals and others.
Traditional toxicology defines toxic manifestations and current modernized toxicology will clarify mechanism of the targeted compound, even epigenetic changes. Therefore, toxicology may play important roles in the development of regulatory science.
