The Tox21 Consortium

Tox21 is pooling federal resources and expertise from EPA, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences/National Toxicology Program, National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to use robotics technology to screen thousands of chemicals for potential toxicity, use screening data to predict the potential toxicity of chemicals and develop a cost-effective approach for prioritizing the thousands of chemicals that need toxicity testing.

Partners

EPA Office of Research and Development

National Toxicology Program

NIH Chemical Genomics Center

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

What We Do

• Currently screening over 10,000 chemicals at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center using innovative robotic technology (View Chemical List)
• Through a Memorandum of Understanding, research, develop, validate and translate innovative chemical testing methods that characterize toxicity pathways (pdf, 7pp, 60kb)
• Research, develop, validate and translate innovative chemical testing methods that characterize toxicity pathways.
• Research ways to use new tools to identify chemical induced biological activity mechanisms.
• Prioritize which chemicals need more extensive toxicological evaluation.
• Develop models that can be used to more effectively predict how chemicals will affect biological responses.
• Identify chemicals, assays, informatic analyses, and targeted testing needed for the innovative testing methods.
• Conduct 50 or more ToxCast™ high-throughput screening assays on this enlarged chemical library every year for the next several years.
• Be able to provide the data generated from the innovative chemical testing methods to risk assessors to use when making decisions about protecting human health and environment.