Innovating human chemical hazard and risk assessment through an holistic approach

This paper advocates a human-based holistic approach to chemical safety assessment, based on an in silico description of human biology, the derivation of the adverse outcome pathway network from that description, its translation into batteries of in vitro and in silico assays to monitor critical key events in the pathway network, and the integration of the results by modern computational tools to predict health effects. Several ongoing international research projects are described which take on this challenge aiming at providing proofs of principle for the feasibility of this approach. This advance is supported by successes in the application of computational approaches, such as machine learning in clinical diagnostics and treatment.