HUMAN TOXOME

Toxicity testing typically involves studying adverse health outcomes in animals subjected to high doses of toxicants with subsequent extrapolation to expected human responses at lower doses. The system relies on the use of a 40+year-old patchwork of animal tests that are expensive (costing more than $3B per year), time-consuming, low-throughput and often provide results of limited predictive value for human health effects. The low-throughput of current toxicity testing approaches (which are largely the same for industrial chemicals, pesticides and drugs) has led to a backlog of more than 80,000 chemicals to which humans are potentially exposed whose potential toxicity remains largely unknown. In 2007, the National Research Council (NRC) released the report "Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy", that charted a long-range strategic plan for transforming toxicity testing. The major components of the plan include the use of predictive, high-throughput cell-based..