Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.
Parts in this series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
In my last post I introduced EPA’s collaborative NexGen effort and briefly described the scientific advances underpinning the program. In this post, I’ll explore some of the potential power of EPA’s efforts, which will require that we get a bit into the nitty gritty (nerd spoiler alert!).
NexGen is focusing on how new scientific knowledge and technological capabilities may interplay with traditional hazard and risk assessment that predominantly relies on more expensive and time-consuming animal studies.
There has been a lot of buzz around what is called high-throughput (HT) testing of chemicals. Just last week, EPA issued a public statement describing the unveiling of a new robot housed at the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC). I highly recommend watching the robot in action by clicking on the “Toxicity Testing Robot System” video link available on the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute’s website. The robot is scheduled to test 10,000 chemicals for potential toxicity! So, what does that actually mean? Read More