FDA's Predictive Toxicology Roadmap: Implications and Opportunities for Stakeholders

Thursday, May 10, 2018
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. EST

Presented by

Suzanne Fitzpatrick, PhD, DABT, ERT
Senior Advisor for Toxicology
FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)

Webcast Lecture

FDA's Predictive Toxicology Roadmap: Implications and Opportunities for Stakeholders

About the Presentation

Toxicology is critical to FDA’s mission because it is applied across the breadth of FDA-regulated product areas.  Toxicological testing is done during the development and evaluation of FDA-regulated products, from human and animal drugs and medical devices to food and food ingredients, human biologics, and tobacco products.  Today’s advances in systems biology, stem cells, engineered tissues, and mathematical modeling are offering exciting opportunities to improve toxicology’s predictive ability, potentially enhancing FDA’s ability to quickly and more accurately predict potential toxicities--and reduce associated risks to the public.  These breakthroughs also hold the potential for replacing, reducing, and/or refining animal testing.

This presentation will discuss FDA’s Predictive Toxicology Roadmap, its six-part framework for integrating novel predictive toxicology methods into safety and risk assessments of its products.  In this context, the presenter will detail FDA’s collaborative efforts to advance toxicology toward a more predictive science with NIH, EPA and other federal agencies through programs such as Toxicology Testing in the 21st Century (Tox21) and the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM).  FDA’s unprecedented role in the development and evaluation of the organs-on-a-chip technology with sister federal agencies and industry will be described and offered as an example of how FDA is enabling innovation in this exciting field.

Finally, Dr. Fitzpatrick will discuss the ways in which FDA is encouraging diverse stakeholders to work with the agency to share ideas, discuss new technologies, and highlight collaborations that are developing and testing new methods.

About the Presenter

Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. is a Senior Science Advisor for Toxicology in FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.  A board-certified toxicologist in the U.S. and in Europe, Dr. Fitzpatrick is the FDA lead for the federal collaboration among FDA, EPA, and NIH, Toxicology Testing in the 21st Century (Tox 21), which looks to develop alternatives to animal testing as well as chair of the FDA Predictive Toxicology Roadmap Committee. Dr. Fitzpatrick played a pivotal role in helping launch the organs-on-a-chip tool, a revolutionary testing technology being evaluated by FDA.  She is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, the FDA representative to the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing Board, and past president of the American College of Toxicology and of the Nation’s Capital Chapter of the Society of Toxicology.  Dr. Fitzpatrick received her B.A. from the University of California at San Diego and her Ph.D. from Georgetown University.