Chemical substance in vitro/in silico screening system to predict human- and ecotoxicological effects (ChemScreen)

 The current system of risk assessment of chemicals is complex, very resource-intensive and extremely time-consuming. Because of this, there is a great need to modernize this process. However, this is not feasible without alternative, integrated testing strategies in which chemical characteristics are used to more advantage and where costly and time consuming animal tests are replaced to a large extent by more rapid, cheap and ethically less controversial methods. This is particularly needed for reproductive toxicity testing of chemicals. Reproductive toxicity is important to assess both human and environmental toxicity and uses the most animals in toxicity testing. Unfortunately, there are very few alternative methods. ChemScreen aims to fill this gap and place the tests in a more general innovative animal free testing strategy.

• ChemScreen is a collaborative project funded by the European Union (FP7; Environment programme) .

• It has 9 partners from 5  European countries

• Starting date: 01-01-10

• Strong link to US-EPA NCCT (Toxcast, Tox21)

• Sister project of the NCCT/STAR centre