QSAR Toolbox version 2.2 now available

News Alert

ECHA/NA/11/31
Media enquiries: ECHA Press

Version 2.2 of the OECD QSAR Toolbox for Grouping Chemicals into Categories is now available to download.

Helsinki, 21 July 2011 - The software helps registrants and authorities to use Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship ((Q)SAR) methodologies to group chemicals into categories and to fill data gaps by read-across, trend analysis and to assess the (eco)toxicity hazards of chemicals under REACH. This helps to reduce costs and unnecessary testing on vertebrate animals.

The user can:

• Identify analogues¹ for a chemical, retrieve experimental results available for those analogues and fill data gaps by read-across or trend analysis;
• Categorise large inventories of chemicals according to mechanisms or modes of action;
• Fill data gaps for any chemical by using the library of (Q)SAR models;
• Evaluate the robustness of a potential analogue for read-across;
• Evaluate the appropriateness of a (Q)SAR model for filling a data gap for a particular target chemical;
• Build (Q)SAR models.

Version 2.2 has improved the profiling, the software functionalities and the interface. It also contains new data on mutagenicity.

The release is part of a four-year collaborative project between the OECD and ECHA.

¹An analogue specifies a chemical for which read-across may be applied (see also the REACH guidance document on QSARs and grouping of chemicals).