ICCVAM Biennial Report 2020-2021

In 2015, ICCVAM initiated a series of Communities of Practice webinars to provide opportunities for detailed presentations on a current topic relevant to alternative test method development.

• The sixth of these webinars, presented on Jan. 21, 2020, was titled Use of Animal-free Affinity Reagents. In this webinar, Alejandra Solache, Ph.D., of Abcam presented an overview of production, use, and characteristics of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. Rebecca Clewell, Ph.D., of 21st Century Tox Consulting summarized a recent review by a working group of the EURL ECVAM Scientific Advisory Committee of the on the scientific validity and benefits of animal-free technologies to produce affinity reagents.
• The Jan. 26, 2021, Communities of Practice webinar focused on Non-animal Approaches for Mixtures Assessment. In this event, three ICCVAM agency scientists described approaches being used to assess human risk of toxicity from mixtures. Cynthia Rider, Ph.D., NIEHS, discussed assessing safety of botanicals. Patricia Ruiz, Ph.D., ATSDR, described computational approaches to predict toxicity of mixtures. Kristin Isaacs, Ph.D., EPA, presented a data mining approach that uses purchasing data to estimate exposure to consumer product ingredients.