The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on August 7, 2024 that it will hold a webinar on the topic 28 August 2024on the use of new method approaches (NAM). The webinar “The CATMoS acute oral toxicity model and evaluation of its potential use in a regulatory context for pesticide hazard and risk assessment” is the fifth in a series organized in collaboration with PETA Science Consortium International (PSCI), the Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS) and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR). The speakers are:

• Kamel Mansouri, National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM). Dr. Mansouri will present a global project led by NICEATM and the Acute Toxicity Working Group of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM). EPA states that the goal of the project was to develop computational models to predict the acute oral toxicity of chemicals. The project received 139 models developed using a dataset of 11,992 chemicals. The models were then combined in the Collaborative Acute Toxicity Modeling Suite (CATMoS), which demonstrated performance comparable to that of vertebrate animal testing for predicting toxicity. According to the EPA, “These models cover acute toxicity endpoints relevant to regulations and are currently being reviewed by EPA for use to replace vertebrate animal studies in the agency’s chemicals and pesticides research, regulatory, compliance, and enforcement activities.”
• Michael Lowit, EPA Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP). Dr. Lowit will present OPP’s work with several national and international organizations and numerous stakeholders to evaluate pesticide toxicology studies and advance the use of NAMs in regulatory risk assessment of acute toxicity. OPP collaborated with NICEATM and the Humane Society to evaluate how well computational models predict the toxicity of conventional pesticides. CATMoS was used to predict the acute oral toxicity of EPA-registered pesticides and compared to the lethal dose determined by vertebrate animal testing. According to EPA, “the results may support the use of CATMoS predictions in lieu of vertebrate animal testing in some cases.”