Toxicity profiling

Toxicity profiling is a strategy to screen the toxic modes of action that can be exerted by a single compound or a complex environmental sample. By testing a single compound in a battery of in vitro bioassays each representing a specific mode of action, a toxicity profile is obtained that can be considered as a ‘fingerprint’ of that particular compound. Mutual comparison of toxicity profiles allows grouping, ranking and prioritization of compounds for further hazard and risk assessment purposes. Toxicity profiling of environmental samples has the additional advantage that for each toxic mode of action the integrated toxic potency of the complex mixture can be determined, even when the identities and the concentrations of the individual constituents of the mixture are unknown.  One of the challenges currently addressed in the Chemistry and Biology department is to expand the toxicity profiling approach for single compounds and complex environmental samples with genomics information representing a multitude of endpoints. Contact information: Dr. Timo Hamers.