The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has updated its QSAR Toolbox software that will allow governments to better predict hazardous properties of chemicals via the inclusion of new data sources, upgraded search and reporting, and new tools to account for metabolisms and to predict repeat dose toxicity as well as hazards for mixtures.
5 November 2012: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released an improved version of its Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) Toolbox software that allows regulators and industry to use computer modeling to predict hazardous properties of chemicals.
The updated version, QSAR Toolbox (03): includes new data sources; adds tools for predicting repeated dose toxicity; enables predicting hazards for mixtures; facilitates prediction that accounts for metabolism; and offers an upgraded search and reporting engine to handle single chemicals, mixtures and metabolites.
The QSAR Toolbox was initially released by the OECD’s Chemicals Programme in 2008, and has become widely used by industry, member governments and non-OECD governments to predict the hazardous properties of chemicals while cutting the time, funds and animal testing previously required. International organizations have also utilized the tool, including an intersessional working group of the Stockholm Convention’s Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC), which recently utilized QSAR to screen chemical alternatives to the pesticides DDT and endosulfan to identify possible POPs.
The OECD’s QSAR Project is largely financed by the European Union (EU), with donations of databases and tools by a wide variety of governments, universities, research institutes, corporations, industry associations and the European Commission. [OECD Note] [QSAR Toolbox]