ECHA Advances Alternatives to Animal Testing with Expanded Pharmaceutical Dataset and Toxicological Ontology

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has released a comprehensive dataset on 528 approved pharmaceuticals, incorporating results from animal studies and human data. This dataset, enriched with information on 180 new substances, aids in developing alternatives to animal testing by providing structured toxicological information for industry and research. The data supports toxicity assessments for similar chemicals, contributes to reducing animal testing, and facilitates the creation of predictive models. Additionally, ECHA introduced a customised ontology, a dictionary of toxicological terms, containing over 20,000 new standardized terms, enhancing the classification and organization of chemical effects in a uniform manner.