News Releases from Region 05

EPA Awards $800,000 to Purdue University to Develop New Approaches for Evaluating Chemical Toxicokinetics

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (August 3, 2020) – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $790,441 in research funding to Purdue University to develop New Approach Methods (NAMs) for evaluating chemical toxicokinetics, an important aspect of evaluating the impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment. NAMs allow researchers to better predict potential hazards for risk assessment purposes without the use of traditional methods that rely on animal testing. Specifically, the research supported by this grant will create an integrated blood brain barrier computer model to help determine if a chemical may cause neurotoxicity.

“EPA is proud to support the university’s innovative research to advance our knowledge of how exposure to chemicals affects the brain,” said Regional Administrator Kurt Thiede. “Accurately and efficiently evaluating the safety of chemicals will improve our ability to protect public health.” 

Purdue’s project, “Integrated Blood Brain Barrier - Computational Model Development to Predict Doses of Concern for Compound Linked Neurotoxicity,” is one of five to be awarded nationwide to research teams through EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program. Their projects will address gaps in ways to obtain data for informing chemical toxicokinetics and exposure-related factors not currently considered.

Toxicokinetics are an important component of understanding how chemicals can impact health by looking at chemical concentrations that cause changes at the cellular or molecular level. New methods, tools, and approaches can improve our ability to predict a chemical’s health impacts and reduce uncertainty as the science moves from laboratory approaches to real world scenarios.

For more information on EPA’s STAR recipients: https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipients.display/rfa_id/653/records_per_page/ALL

The research from these grants provide critical science to advance understanding of the impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment. For more information on EPA’s safer chemical research, visit: https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/chemical-research

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