April 25, 2023 by Kate Roylance
Last week, Owen and Kate represented wca at the British Toxicology Society’s Annual Congress, hosted at the Park Regis, Birmingham from Monday 17th to Wednesday 19th April.
The conference covered a wide range of topics within the toxicological discipline, including regulatory updates, ongoing academic research and topical scientific discussions. Some sessions of particular interest to wca included: “Dose-response relationships in chemical risk assessment – is there a new paradigm shift?”, covering areas such as mixture risk assessments, non-monotonic dose-responses, genotoxicity thresholds and threshold approaches in endocrine disruption.
Other key sessions were: “Application of in vitro methods for mechanistic understanding and decision making”, which provided interesting developments on the validation of in vitro studies and the process of validation, as well as the use of the RTgill-W1 cell line assay (OECD 249) in acute fish toxicity testing. Also, “Innovative approaches supporting the toxicological evaluation of agrochemicals”, which provided an informative discussion on the use of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) to support toxicological risk assessment of agrochemicals.
BTS also put on a study director workshop, which discussed the latest developments in study directorships at laboratories, including new methodologies such as rodent intracranial surgery for gene/cell therapy safety testing as well as conduct of in vitro oestrogen VM7Luc receptor transactivation tests (OECD 455) and considerations for dermal toxicity studies.
Of additional interest was the first ecotoxicological session to feature at the BTS congress: “Increasing the use of cross-species extrapolation to support decision making”. This session discussed the need to increase our knowledge of cross-species extrapolation through talks on the International Consortium to Advance Cross Species Extrapolation (ICACSER), integrating human health and environmental testing of endocrine disruptors, the MetaPath project and the use of in vitro biotransformation data to support the waiving of in vivo bioaccumulation studies in fish.
wca has experienced toxicologists and ecotoxicologists who have been conducting chemical risk assessments for industrial chemicals, agrochemicals and medical devices for regulatory submissions, for many years. Our expertise also extends to evidence-based toxicology assessments, adverse outcome pathways and endocrine disruptor assessments. Please contact us if you would like more information on our services in this area or if we can provide support.