Welcome

The International Council on Animal Protection in OECD Programmes (ICAPO) seeks to ensure the widest possible integration of alternative methods in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) influential guidelines and programmes. The OECD is an economic alliance of 30 of the world's industrialised countries. Based in Paris, the OECD co-ordinates the development of standardised chemical testing guidelines which are then adopted by the member countries. The OECD also co-ordinates the development of chemical testing programmes, such as its current programme on endocrine disruptors.

AOP

The OECD manages the Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki, part of a larger set of tools termed the AOP Knowledge Base. The Wiki allows building of Adverse Outcome Pathways via scientific crowd-sourcing. It is envisioned that curating and organizing available data on chemical-response and response-response interactions into an AOP framework will speed progress in predicting the toxicity of chemicals without whole animals.

Learn more about the AOP Wiki and the OECD AOP Program. The scientific literature is now replete with examples of particular AOPs and uses for them. The AOP Resource Sheet (docx) provides a list of key resources you may wish to consult.

QSAR Toolbox

The OECD maintains the QSAR Toolbox, which is a computational tool that can help international regulators, the chemical industry and other stakeholders group chemicals into categories to fill information gaps without new testing.  ICAPO has contributed financial and policy support to the development of the toolbox.

The QSAR Toolbox is freely available software that can be used to fill information gaps needed to assess hazards of chemicals. The Toolbox incorporates information and tools from various sources into a logical workflow. Grouping chemicals into chemical categories is crucial to this workflow.

In November 2018, the QSAR Toolbox 4.2.1 was released and is available for free download. This was a service release to fix the bugs and improve the WebService interface.  For more information about OECD QSAR toolbox related activities and instructions on how to download the software visit the OECD OSAR Toolbox website.

Test Guidelines

For a complete list of OECD Test guidelines for Health effects visit https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/oecd-guidelines-for-the-testing-of-chemicals-section-4-health-effects_20745788/datedesc#collectionsort.

Alternative non-animal test guidelines

Test No. 430: In Vitro Skin Corrosion: Transcutaneous Electrical Resistance Test Method (TER)

Test No. 439: In Vitro Skin Irritation: Reconstructed Human Epidermis Test Method

Test No. 455: Performance-Based Test Guideline for Stably Transfected Transactivation In Vitro Assays to Detect Estrogen Receptor Agonists and Antagonists; accompanying software is also available

Test No. 431: In Vitro Skin Corrosion: Reconstructed Human Epidermis (RHE) Test Method

Test No. 473: In Vitro Mammalian Chromosomal Aberration Test

Test No. 476: In Vitro Mammalian Cell Gene Mutation Tests Using the Hprt and xprt Genes

Test No. 487: In Vitro Mammalian Cell Micronucleus Test

Test No. 490: In Vitro Mammalian Cell Gene Mutation Test Using the Thymidine Kinase Gene

Test No. 493: Performance-Based Test Guideline for Human Recombinant Estrogen Receptor (rrER)In Vitro Assays to Detect Chemicals with ER Binding Affinity

Test No. 435: In Vitro Membrane Barrier Test Method for Skin Corrosion

Test No. 442C: In Chemico Skin Sensitization

Test No. 428: Skin Absorption: In Vitro Methods

Test No. 432: In Vitro 3T3 NRU Phototoxicity Test

Test No. 479: Genetic Toxicology: In Vitro Sister Chromatid Exchange Assay in Mammalian Cells (?)

Test No. 482: Genetic Toxicology: DNA Damage and Repair, Unscheduled DNA Synthesis in Mammalian Cells In Vitro

News Archives

International Council Partners with Computational Toxicology Experts to Train EPA Regulators in New Tools (April 2015)

Companies, Regulatory Authorities Can Spare Millions of Animals in Labs With New OECD Test Method, Says Animal Protection Coalition (April 2011)

Animal Protection Coalition Applauds International Adoption of Replacement to Cruel Rabbit Draize Test (April 2011)

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