The ToxBank project was launched in January 2011. ToxBank establishes a dedicated web-based warehouse for toxicity data management and modelling, a "gold standards" compound database and repository of selected test compounds, and a reference resource for cells, cell lines and tissues of relevance for in vitro systemic toxicity research carried out across the FP7 HEALTH.2010.4.2.9 Alternative Testing Strategies SEURAT-1 program. The project develops infrastructure and service functions to create a sustainable predictive toxicology support resource going beyond the lifetime of the program.
ToxBank should provide a unique opportunity to create an interoperable linked resource infrastructure supporting many diverse scientific research activities in the development of alternative testing methods whose ultimate goal is to replace animal testing. Developments on OpenTox should provide a strong foundation on interfaces, components, standards, and ontology that will enable and accelerate development of a modern infrastructure servicing the needs of many researchers including cell biologists, assay developers, omics technology developers, device engineers, molecular biologists, chemists, computational scientists and systems biologists.
The Seurat-1 research cluster that ToxBank is supporting had its Kick-Off meeting activities 1-3 March 2011 in Cascais, Portugal. Seurat-1 is a public-private partnership inititative between the EU's FP7 program and Colipa. The cluster involves seven projects: SCR&TOX, HeMiBio, Detective, COSMOS, NOTOX, ToxBank (infrastructure) and COACH (coordination).
This project will be jointly funded by COLIPA and the EC. Any opinions expressed in this post are those of the author. COLIPA is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein
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