Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 50th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 19, 2023 - June 21, 2023
The key tasks in drug discovery safety evaluation at the exploratory stage are to identify toxicity risks, and to plan and implement risk assessment and mitigation. Considering the timeline for drug development, it is desirable to identify toxicity risks as early as possible. Meanwhile, compounds worthy of conducting toxicity evaluation (e.g., having sufficient pharmacological activity to express on-target toxicity) are needed to obtain wet data. However, if we have to wait until the compounds are produced, this might delay the identification of toxicity risks. To avoid this delay, Target Safety Assessment (TSA), by which toxicity risks for pharmacological targets, among others, are predicted from information in the literature and databases, is being conducted in many pharmaceutical companies at the exploratory stage of drug development. However, each company is currently applying it in a trial-and-error approach. In my presentation, the results of a survey on TSA among domestic pharmaceutical companies will be reported, to trigger discussion in this workshop. The results reveal that each company is struggling to decide how much resources they should allocate to TSA and how they should interpret and handle TSA output. After my presentation, speakers will present their attempts to perform TSA in their companies, and the contents of their presentations and issues regarding TSA will be discussed in the panel discussion.
