Historically, the toxicological hazard and safety assessment of chemical substances heavily relied on the outcome of animal testing. Animal welfare considerations, societal concerns, regulatory action and the desire by industry to bring safe products to the market without the use of experimental animals triggered the need to use new methodologies and approaches to risk assessment. The integration of in silico, in chemico, high throughput and in vitro approaches paired with exposure considerations provide the opportunity to ensure chemical and product safety without animal testing.
Our team members are very passionate about identifying and applying new approach methodologies in practice. We are routinely confronted with clients’ queries on how to evaluate the safety a newly developed cosmetic ingredient or a non-intentionally added substance (NIAS) in a food contact material without any new animal testing.
We are eager to find innovative testing strategies or assessment solutions to fill remaining information gaps. In light of the existing deficiencies in predicting systemic toxicity, read-across is still considered the most actionable short/mid-term strategy for chemical safety assessment. ToxMinds has an excellent track record for analogue identification and the successful submission of QSAR-supported read-across justifications under the REACH regulation.
We are interested to hear from your issues and to discuss how you could proceed further to or stay on the market on the basis of new, non-animal based testing or assessment strategies. Below is just a shortlist of possible options available:
- Thorough desktop search to identify, collate and appraise any relevant toxicological information
- QSAR-based (eco)toxicological hazard profiling and metabolism prediction
- Exposure and systemic bioavailability prediction (target organs, internal concentration)
- Evaluation of the suitability of TTC and read-across approaches
- Advice on integrated testing strategies using non-animal methodologies as permitted under the EU REACH and BPR Regulation
- Non-biased MoA hypothesis generation based on all available data and identification of potential data/information gap
- Development of tiered testing programme(s) to reduce read-across uncertainties or verify MoA hypotheses