Robert Kavlock
Director
National Centre for Computational Toxicology
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
109 T.W. Alexander Dr. (B205-01)
27711 RTP
Tel: (919) 541-2326
Kavlock.Robert@epamail.epa.gov

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Dr. Robert Kavlock discusses the Computational Toxicology Research Program at the National Centre for Computational Toxicology.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Computational Toxicology Research Program (CompTox) will allow for a large number of chemicals to be screened effectively for risks at a small cost in a very short amount of time.  Dr. Kavlock reviews the challenges to predicting toxicology (pathway profiling), elements needed to transform toxicology prediction and the development of CompTox with its associated database tools, including: ToxRefDB, Distributed Structure-Searchable Database (DSSTox) and the ToxCast Database (ToxCastDB).   CompTox is composed of three main elements. The largest component is the National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT), which was established in 2005 to coordinate research on chemical screening and prioritization, informatics and systems modeling.  The second element consists of research in EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) and National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL). The final components are the academic centers working on various aspects of computational toxicology funded by EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program.  The main goal of the U.S. EPA computational toxicology initiative is to integrate modern computing and information technologies with molecular biology to improve prioritization of data and chemical risk assessments. Ongoing work will provide improved decision support tools for high-throughput screening, risk assessment and risk management.