Regulatory forum opinion piece: The role of the toxicologic pathologist in the postgenomic era: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The "omics," high-throughput screening, computational modeling, and database mining revolutions have each arrived with euphoric expectations, considerable hand waving, and promises to set toxicity testing priorities and reduce reliance on conventional animal toxicity and carcinogenicity testing. Reflecting back on prior experience with other predictive approaches and alternatives, what follows the rush to endorse a promising new technology or different approach to toxicity/carcinogenicity testing is years of grinding out data for validation and optimization. Much of what has driven the enthusiasm for each new emerging technology and approach is the costly, labor-intensive, and sometimes irrelevant and inefficient rodent bioassay-testing paradigm. However, no one should expect abandonment of all animal testing for the foreseeable future, especially for agrochemicals and environmental xenobiotic exposures. It is reasonable to anticipate the future will bring still new approaches to safety testing and human risk assessment. In the past, each new approach has not achieved the inflated expectations for safety testing and human risk assessment but often has become a useful research tool with tangible contributions to basic biology and clinical medicine. The toxicologic pathologist is embedded in the matrix of a mixed disciplinary milieu and is faced with some critical challenges and important opportunities in the postgenomic decades ahead. So what advice do we give to the journeyman toxicologic pathologist who will hopefully function effectively in the postgenomic decades ahead? And what advice do we also give to the experienced bench pathologist confronted with emerging technologies each accompanied by a bewildering array of techno-jargon so that he or she can remain effective as a toxicologic pathology practitioner? © 2012 by The Author(s).