Report of an ISRTP workshop: progress and barriers to incorporating alternative toxicological methods in the U.S.

The workshop objectives were to explore progress in implementing new, revised and alternative toxicological test methods across regulatory evaluation frameworks and decision-making programs in the United States, to identify barriers and to develop recommendations to further promote adoption of approaches that reduce, refine, or replace the use of animal methods. The workshop included sessions on: (1) current research, development, and validation of alternative methods within the U.S. federal government; (2) emerging alternative methodologies with potential applications to a broad spectrum of toxicity evaluation strategies; (3) tiered evaluation ("intelligent testing") strategies; and (4) identification of, and recommendations to address, critical barriers that affect adoption and use of new, revised alternative toxicological test methods by U.S. regulatory agencies. Through facilitated discussion, a list of barriers and recommendations were developed and grouped into categories of economic/financial, scientific/technical, and regulatory/policy. Overall, participants from all sectors collectively supported catalyzing actions to promote more meaningful and rapid progress for research to develop alternative methods focused for use in regulatory programs, accelerated lab investigations to validate such alternative methods and adoption of regulatory frameworks which embrace and incorporate these validated alternatives.