The concept of Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) has been advanced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries to enable a progressive shift from traditional chemical assessments largely based on the observation of the adverse effect in animal models, using individual methods or pre-defined batteries of standard toxicity tests, to assessment strategies integrating diverse lines of evidence. The flexible nature of IATA allows the inclusion of mechanistic data generated with non-animal methods and with new technologies (e.g. high throughput and high content methods). The assessment process within IATA is typically conducted through weight-of-evidence which inevitably includes elements of subjective expert judgment. For these reasons IATA cannot be fully harmonised across sectors and countries. Nevertheless, some of the IATA components, such as Defined Approaches, which consist of a fixed data interpretation procedure (DIP) applied to data generated with a defined set of information sources, can be harmonised. The focus of this MiniReview is to provide an illustration of the differences between the IATA developed so far in areas of regulatory toxicology, and ongoing activities related to the international harmonisation of defined approaches that rely on multiple non-animal information sources.

CASATI Silvia; 

2018-11-14

WILEY-BLACKWELL

JRC111444

1742-7835 (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC111444,   

10.1016/j.cotox.2017.05.004 (online),