Agencies Use Robotics to Test Chemicals for Toxicity

(National Human Genome Research Institute)

National Institutes of Health (NIH) today unveiled a new robotic screening system that will test 10,000 different chemicals for potential toxicity. The system is a result of a collaboration among several federal agencies known as Tox21.

The  system is located at NIH’s Chemical Genomics Center in Rockville, Maryland. Tox21 is a joint effort started in 2008 that includes the National Toxicology Program in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Human Genome Research Institute, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The 10,000 chemicals screened by the robot system include compounds found in industrial and consumer products, food additives, and drugs. The Tox21 program analyzed more than 200 public databases of chemicals and drugs used in the United States and abroad to select the first 10,000 chemicals for testing.

Tox21 has already screened more than 2,500 chemicals for potential toxicity, using robots and other innovative chemical screening technologies. The new test results are expected to provide information useful for evaluating if the chemicals have enough potential to disrupt human body processes to lead to adverse health effects.

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