NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM)
Recent NICEATM and ICCVAM Publications
- A recent paper in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology provides a summary of U.S. federal agency information needs for ecotoxicity testing, emerging technologies for evaluating ecotoxicity and environmental safety, and the potential applicability of those technologies for regulatory testing. The summary was prepared by the Ecotoxicology Workgroup of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM), which receives support from NICEATM. This information will be useful for coordinating efforts to develop and implement alternative test methods to reduce, refine, or replace animal use in chemical safety evaluations.
Ceger et al. 2022. Current ecotoxicity testing needs among selected U.S. federal agencies. Reg Toxicol Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yrtph.2022.105195. - NICEATM and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists compiled, curated, and analyzed a set of over 2000 chemicals with multiple independent study records to characterize variability and reproducibility of results. Conditional probability analyses revealed that replicate studies only resulted in the same hazard categorization on average at 60% likelihood. The authors concluded that inherent biological or protocol variability likely underlies the variance in the results.
Karmaus et al. 2022. Evaluation of variability across rat acute oral systemic toxicity studies. Tox Sci. https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfac042 - A new publication coauthored by Acting NICEATM Director Nicole Kleinstreuer describes use of high-throughput transcriptomics to characterize the estrogenic activity of 62 chemicals previously tested in the EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. The study demonstrated the ability of high-throughput transcriptomics to identify active and inactive reference chemicals, supporting its potential to rapidly identify chemicals with potential estrogenic activity for additional screening and testing.
Corton et al. 2022. Towards replacement of animal tests with in vitro assays: a gene expression biomarker predicts in vitro and in vivo estrogen receptor activity. Chem Biol Interact. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbi.2022.109995.