Within the Tox21 consortium is the Toxicity Forecaster,
or ToxCast research program.
This program has profiled to date over 2,000 chemicals
across over 700 in vitro assays.
The first phase focused on predominantly food used pesticides,
around 300 chemicals that were very data-rich.
They had over 30 years of traditional animal studies.
Those studies are valued at over $2 billion.
So those provide some nice anchoring end points,
where we can compare the bio-activity that these chemicals cause in vitro,
in the cell-based or biochemical assays, and compare those
to the in vivo toxicity endpoints that we saw in the animal studies.
Phase-II expanded the chemical landscape to an additional
776 chemicals from a wide range of sources.
These were industrial and consumer products,
things like cosmetics ingredients, food additives, and failed pharmaceuticals.
This chemical library was used to extend and apply the first generation
predictive models of toxicity that were built off the Phase-I data set.
Currently, Phase-III of ToxCast testing is under way,
that expands the chemical library to an additional 1,000 chemicals.
Tox21 tests far more chemicals in a smaller range of assays.