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The International QSAR Foundation hosts strategic planning workshops to bring together experts for the development of implementation plans for alternative approaches to animal testing. IQF devotes a minimum of 50 percent of its research resources to targeted grants to experts in order to turn the research implementation plans into alternative methods and reduced reliance on testing.
Research Implementation Workshops
The Role of Aquatic Toxicology in Risk Assessment June 27-29, 2006
This annual conference in Duluth, Minnesota, will link QSAR models and advanced animal extrapolation models to extend existing animal test databases to hundreds of untested chemicals, to other animal species, and to different toxicity endpoints. The McKim Conference invites a small group of experts to discuss the major gaps in toxicological models and outline experimental approaches to bridge those gaps. The McKim Conference offers an opportunity for other researchers to observe and participate in the discussion. In addition, the McKim Conference seeks to stimulate student research by highlighting innovative student research projects in QSAR and toxicological modeling.
The 2006 McKim Conference will be held on June 27-29 at the U.S. EPA conference facilities in Duluth Minnesota. The agenda and registration materials are provided.
2nd Knoxville Workshop on Reactive Toxicity April, 1-4, 2006
Workshop Information  6.3MB
Workshop Agenda 1.3MB
Workshop Goals
The Knoxville Workshop was convened to evaluate the use of model nucleophiles as an organizing principle for predicting the many adverse effects of reactive chemicals. Briefly, the reactivity of chemicals toward model nucleophiles such as glutathione and lysine are used as independent variables to correlate with skin sensitization, inhalation toxicity, hepatocyte toxicity and fish toxicity. These same reactivity parameters are used as reference data to classify the reactivity mechanisms and predict reactivity directly from chemical structure.
The workshop found that there reaction rates with the thiol moiety of glutathione are appearing in the literature under a variety of experimental conditions. The largest systematic data set is that of the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine which totals more than 250 chemicals, and efforts are planned to compare the various methods before the 3rd Knoxville Workshop. These abiotic reactions rates were found to be extremely powerful in predicting a variety of effects of the chemicals.
1st Knoxville Workshop on Reactive Toxicity May 7-10, 2005
The 1st Knoxville workshop in 2005 accomplished a major IQF goal by formulating a conceptual framework for predicting reactive toxicity. At the heart of the conceptual framework is the use of model compounds which simulate natural proteins and other important cellular targets for reactive chemicals and produce a reactivity profile. These model compounds are easily synthesized and react with chemicals in a test tube, so measuring chemical reactivity does not have to involve any animals or cells.
List of Attendees 78KB
Athens Workshop to Compute Chemical Reactivity
February 28-March 1, 2006
The success of the Knoxville Reactive Toxicity Workshops in relating intermediate empirical measures of chemical reactivity to the downstream biological effects (see Conceptual Framework Manuscript) has paved the way for research to compute the intermediate measures of reactivity directly from structure. The IQF framework will show that important endpoints such as rodent or fish inhalation toxicity can be directly related to the KGSH which the reaction half-life under reference conditions, in much the same way Log P is used to predict bioconcentration factors and related transport properties. CLOGP is a computer program to calculate Log P for chemical, and the Athens Workshop was convened to explore ways of predicting Log GSH directly from structure.
Using SPARC technology (link to SPARC website), the authors of the free website for SPARC at the University of Georgia and U.S. EPA outlined an approach to build a model for chemicals which react with thiol moieties via the Michael addition mechanism as a proof-of-concept. Furthermore, the workshop kicked-off the planning for a larger workshop in molecular modelling for reactivity.
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Peer Consultations On Existing Technology
Peer Consultation of CATABOL February 21-23, 2006
CATABOL is QSAR approach to modelling the biodegradability of chemicals by mixed microbial populations, and to identify potential degradation products. Although a microbial test for ready-degradation does not involve animal tests, microbial degradation is an important parameter in setting priorities for further testing in many countries. In the process called PBT analysis, the chemical is evaluated for Persistence, Bioaccumulation and Toxicity in that order; and having a reliable CATABOL to eliminate the readily degradable chemicals from further testing is important. Moreover, environmental regulations in several countries require further testing if a stable degradation product is formed. Since CATABOL has the capability of predicting both pieces of information, IQF hosted a workshop of regulators and experts from industry and academia to conduct a peer consultation of CATABOL.
Catabol Agenda 95KB
Panelists from the workshop 102KB
Consultation report and slides will be available online soon.
For further information on Catabol click here
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