Toward reducing animal testing while predicting a chemical’s effects on human health, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and their colleagues have developed an in vitro robotic screening tool able to systematically screen thousands of chemicals in human cell lines. In a study published today (January 26) in Nature Communications, the NIH-led team demonstrates an ability to test environmental chemicals found in drugs, food and food packaging, consumer products, and chemicals produced during manufacturing and industrial processes using cell-based assays.
The work is part of Tox21, a collaboration among four government agencies—the NIH, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—that officially kicked off in 2008.
“I think this is one of the best examples of big data entering [the field of] toxicology,” said Thomas Hartung, director of the Centers for Alternatives ...
