Funding for chemical toxicity tool which enhances 3Rs
17 Apr 2015 by Evoluted New Media
The ChemInteract consortium has been awarded funding to develop an innovative tool for assessing the potentially harmful effects of chemicals that are used in the environment and in consumer products.
The award comes from the open innovation programme run by the NC3Rs, the national centre for the replacment, reduction and refinment of the use of animals in research. The technology, which relies on data from human cells grown in the laboratory, could result in a large reduction in the number of live animals used in toxicology studies.
The consortium is a collaboration between Phenotox, Retrogenix, Sheffield Hallam University and Instem. It will aim to identify how a drug interacts with a living cell by using existing laboratory techniques, and expand on these in an attempt to find crucial interactions between chemicals and human proteins that could indicate a potential safety concern.
Dr James Sidaway expert toxicologist at Phenotox said: “There’s a real gap in predicting the adverse events in humans of new chemicals developed by the pharmaceutical, consumer healthcare and agrochemical industries.”
By using complex bioinformatics when developing the tool, the scientists will assess the probability of unwanted effects in humans or other animals caused by chemical-protein interactions. This would help eliminate unsuitable chemicals at an early stage, avoiding unnecessary animal testing.
“Current safety testing approaches rely heavily on animal studies which do not fully represent the human situation. Our animal-free approach builds on advanced, but established, experimental technology from Retrogenix and Sheffield Hallam University and existing big data and bioinformatics expertise from Instem. We are delighted to receive NC3Rs funding to develop this new platform aimed at substantially enhancing the current safety testing of new chemicals,” Dr Sidaway said.
