Navigating the Minefield of Computational Toxicology and Informatics: Looking Back and Charting a New Horizon

As we enter 2020, it is worth looking back at the development and progression of the computational toxicology discipline, how it has evolved and what some opportunities might be going forward. Computational toxicology stands poised to broadly and directly inform chemical safety assessment, and as such, the demands of computational toxicology are growing due to international regulatory needs. Critical to increasing scientific confidence in the use of computational toxicology approaches in applied toxicology decision-making will be: (1) transparency and reproducibility in the underlying data and data analysis approaches utilized; (2) accessibility of information to evaluate the fitness of the computational toxicology approach for a particular problem; and (3) sharing of ideas and approaches internationally. Herein the progress in applied computational toxicology is considered, with a call for additional research to continue this rapid advancement.

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