Toxicity testing in the 21st century--a view from BELLE.

The NAS Committee’s vision, which focuses on understanding toxicity pathways in in vitro systems, represents an important goal for the future of toxicity testing and would contribute to a greater understanding of toxicological effects at low doses. However, implementing this vision for risk assessment purposes requires several intermediate steps, such as establishing that perturbation of toxicity pathways identified in in vitro systems are adequately predictive of adverse effects in humans, and that dose and time-course modeling can adequately translate in vitro findings to in vivo exposures. Despite the multiple challenges that must be overcome before it can be implemented, the vision offers the potential to provide accurate, high-throughput data for toxicological responses that can be used in risk assessment.