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from the "they-terk-our-jerb!"—science-bunnies dept.
Submitted via IRC for takyon
Toxicologists today unveiled a digital chemical safety screening tool that could greatly reduce the need for six common animal tests. Those tests account for nearly 60% of the estimated 3 million to 4 million animals used annually in risk testing worldwide.
The computerized tool—built on a massive database of molecular structures and existing safety data—appears to match, and sometimes improve on, the results of animal tests for properties such as skin sensitization and eye irritation, the researchers report in today's issue of Toxicological Sciences. But it also has limitations; for instance, the method can't reliably evaluate a chemical's risk of causing cancer. And it's not clear how open regulatory agencies will be to adopting a nonanimal approach.
[...] On average, the computational tool reproduced the animal test results 87% of the time. That's better than animal tests themselves can do, Hartung says: In reviewing the literature, his group found that repeated animal tests replicated past results just 81% of the time, on average. "This is an important finding," Hartung says, because regulators often expect alternative methods to animal testing to be reproducible at the 95% threshold—a standard even the animal tests aren't meeting.
[...] The screening method has weaknesses. Although it can predict simple effects such as irritation, more complex endpoints such as cancer are out of its reach, says Mike Rasenberg, who heads ECHA's Computational Assessment & Dissemination unit. "This won't be the end of animal testing," he predicts, "but it's a useful concept for looking at simple toxicity."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 16 2018, @06:12PM
Bill from Marketing would have you know that the new Mountain Spring Green coloring, and additional Citrus Bloom Dew fragrance will raise sales by about 4% for at least 3 months.