Skin Sensitization Prediction Tool Available from National Toxicology Program
A new, open-access web tool published on the National Toxicology Program (NTP) website is intended to help users predict a chemical’s skin sensitization potential from an uploaded data set. The tool, called the Skin Sensitization Risk Assessment – Integrated Chemical Environment or SARA-ICE, was developed by the NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM), which works to develop and evaluate alternatives to animal use for chemical safety testing, and the company Unilever. A recent issue of NICEATM’s e-newsletter describes SARA-ICE as “a Bayesian statistical model that estimates a human-relevant metric of skin sensitizer potency” and the metric, ED01, as “the dose with a 1% chance of human skin sensitization.”
According to NICEATM, the SARA-ICE tool uses data on more than 400 chemicals from the Integrated Chemical Environment (ICE) to predict the ED01. ICE comprises data sets curated by NICEATM and its partners, including in vivo and in vitro test data, in silico toxicity predictions and chemical property data, and reference chemical lists. ICE also includes computational tools for chemical characterization.
Substances that have the potential to be skin sensitizers can be identified “using defined approaches to testing and assessment,” NICEATM explains. According to the center, SARA-ICE has been accepted as one of the defined approaches for skin sensitization described as part of the OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals, a collection of testing methods used by government, industry, and independent laboratories to identify and characterize potential chemical hazards. OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is an international organization focused on finding solutions to social, economic, and environmental challenges.
SARA-ICE, along with a PDF presentation that covers how to use the tool for determining a point of departure for skin sensitization, can be accessed from the NTP website.
