Future of Toxicology and Role of Asian Chemical Safety Network

Toxicology is under challenge from several new trends in science and technology, namely computer, the Internet, genome projects, genomic technologies, and combinatorial chemistry. These new trends will drastically change research style of toxicology. In addition to conventional uni cellular tests and animal tests using rodents, computer simulation, DNA chips (microarrays), in vivo tests using simple model organisms such as nematodesor flies become important routine screening tests. How to arrange these tests in tiers will become a new problem. Endocrine disruptors hypothesis is a good example for this kind of futuristic approach. Computer, particularly the Internet, is also enabling toxicologists and regulatory experts to collaborate more closely. The IPCS (International Program for Chemical Safety) which is ajoint project of WHO, ILO and UNEP, is a well-known international collaborative research for chemical risk assessments. The GINC project of IPCS is an effort to utilize the Internet for such collaborations. Some efforts were also made to establish regional collaboration network in East Asia under this project.