Chapter 16: Tools for Category Formation and Read-Across: Overview of the OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox Check Access

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has an active role in promoting the use of (quantitiative) structure-activity relationships ((Q)SARs) for regulatory purposes, launching a new (Q)SAR project in 2003 with the aim of improving regulatory acceptance of QSARs. Part of this project consisted of the development of the (Q)SAR Application Toolbox, a first verison of whichhas been released for free download. The main feature of the Toolbox is to allow the user to group chemicals into toxicologically meaningful categories and to fill data gaps by read-across and trend analysis. The seminal features of the Toolbox are: (1) identification of relevant structural characteristics and potential mechanism or mode of action of a target chemical; (2) identification of other chemicals that have the same structural characteristics and/or mechanism or mode of action; (3) use of existing experimental data to fill the data gap(s). This chapter will discuss the use and application of the Toolbox.