National Toxicology Program: Landmarks and the Road Ahead

Abstract

The National Toxicology Program (NTP), a cross-agency unit of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), is one of the focal points for government efforts aimed at generating, collecting, and coordinating data used for guiding public health decisions. Now 25 years old, the NTP is in the middle of a strategic planning effort to define how it will integrate new technologies with classical toxicological approaches to continue providing, according to the NTP’s motto, “good science for good decisions.” In its current form, the NTP integrates activities from the NIEHS, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR). Its mission is to evaluate agents of public health concern by developing and applying tools of modern toxicology and molecular biology, a mission it achieves through the use of several strategies. It designs studies on potential toxicants and works with outside groups and government labs to carry them out. It reviews and evaluates what’s missing in understanding environmentally induced diseases. It then seeks to fill those gaps by collaborating and cooperating with federal agencies and with other domestic and foreign toxicology and public health organizations, and by carrying out research itself on human exposure and toxicity at laboratories housed at NIOSH and the NIEHS. It supports grants, contracts, and interagency agreements made through the NIEHS Division of Extramural Research and Training, and it supports the activities of three centers. These activities have brought immense gains in knowledge for the scientific community. But there is more work still to do. Since the fall of 2003, the NTP has been engaged in developing and seeking public comment on a “roadmap” to guide the program’s route forward over the next decade. The roadmap seeks to build on recent technological advances that will allow toxicology to evolve from a largely observational science to one that is more predictive, and thus in many ways more protective of public health.