Ecotoxicology in the 21st century - AOPs, HTT and other acronyms
Citation:
Villeneuve, Dan. Ecotoxicology in the 21st century - AOPs, HTT and other acronyms. SETAC North America, Minneapolis, MN, November 12 - 16, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The adverse outcome pathway concept (AOP), articulated in a 2010 article authored by a working group at the US EPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division (MED), is a long-standing concept aimed at establishing the relevance of mechanistic data for use in regulatory toxicology. With the emergence of the National Research Council’s vision and strategy for toxicity testing in the 21st century, this concept has gained considerable momentum and international attention as a key framework to help support use of new high throughput data streams in regulatory decision-making. The current presentation highlights the role of MED and MED science in developing and applying the AOP framework. It is one of a series that highlight the benefits and impact of 50 years of research at MED, which commenced operations as the Duluth Water Quality Lab in 1967.
Description:
Product Description:The Duluth Water Quality Lab, which is now the US EPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division, commenced operation in 1967. This presentation is one in a series that focuses on the national and international impacts of this division and its research over its 50-year history. The current presentation focuses on the last ten years and the Division’s role in developing important concepts, tools, and frameworks that facilitate a more rapid, cost-effective, and predictive approach to chemical safety assessment. Abstract:In 2007 an influential National Research Council report outlined the limitations of the traditional, empirically-driven, whole organism approach to guideline toxicity testing. The committee laid out a vision and strategy for toxicity testing in the 21st century that would take advantage of decades of advances in biology and technology to evaluate chemical safety more rapidly and cost effectively. At the heart of this approach was the greater application of mechanistic or pathway-based data, such as those which could be obtained through high throughput, in vitro, chemical testing, to predict toxicological outcomes without directly observing them in whole animal toxicity tests. As a response to this strategy, a working group at US EPA Duluth proposed the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept as an important component of an overall strategy for toxicity testing in the 21st century. While the AOP concept was not new, having deep roots in QSAR and biomarker-related research in the field of ecotoxicology, it was recognized as having a valuable and important role to play in this new vision for toxicity testing. As a result, the AOP concept has taken on prominence in ecotoxicology and human health toxicology alike. What was previously a cogitative concept has developed into a formal framework for organizing toxicological knowledge and evidence and a driving force in the US EPA Duluth and broader Office of Research and Development research portfolio. EPA Duluth remains at the forefront of the development and application of the framework, providing some of the earliest examples of formal AOP description, development of quantitative AOPs, and construction of AOP networks. Just as importantly, it remains committed to demonstrating the practical application of AOPs to enhance interpretation of HTT (high throughput toxicology) data streams, development of IATA (integrated approaches to testing and assessment), cross-species extrapolation (e.g., SeqAPASS), and monitoring of the environment (e.g., through the use of EARs [exposure-activity ratios] and EDA [effects-directed analysis]). Building on 50 years of scientific contributions, EPA Duluth continues its mission to protect human health and the environment. The contents of this abstract neither constitute, nor necessarily reflect, US EPA policy.