Our work has been implemented in (Q)SAR software available in the public domain (e.g., OECD QSAR Toolbox, Toxtree), and has been used in the development of (Q)SAR models by other developers.
In particular, Dr. Romualdo Benigni:
→ Worked in the QSAR field for over 30 years (1988 to present);
→ Director of the Unit of “Structure-Activity Relationships” at the Istituto Superiore di Santità from 1995 – 2004;
→ Administrator at O.E.C.D. from 2014 to 2016, with direct responsibility for the development and management of the OECD QSAR Toolbox (including the Read-Across capability);
→ Contributed to critical developments in this field (e.g., participated to the seminal Workshop on“Regulatory Acceptance of (Q)SARs for Human Health and Environmental Endpoints”, hosted by the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals and organized by the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) and the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC)), Setubal, Portugal, 4-6 March 2002);
→ Italian National Delegate in the QSAR Expert Group of the European Union, and in the QSAR Expert Group of OECD. At OECD, he followed the development of the OECD QSAR Toolbox from its start;
→ Participated in the development of the Read- Across Assessment Framework (RAAF) for Human Health of ECHA (e.g., expert at the ECHA Workshop on the Read- Across Assessment Framework (RAAF) for Human Health, Helsinki, 2–3 October, 2014).
The following is a selection of international programs that Dr. Romualdo Benigni and collaborators have lead / participated in:
→ EU Project: “OSIRIS” Optimized strategies for risk assessment of industrial chemicals through integration of non-test and test information”. (2007-2011)
OpenTox EU FP7 project (2008-2011): Coordination of ontology (data management) working group
→ Project ECHA/2011/25 “ONTOLOGY” (2011-2014): Specific contracts 1 and 2: coordination of implementation of the controlled vocabularies (Ontologies) suitable for the standardization and harmonization of the toxicity data for six different toxicity endpoints in the OECD QSAR Toolbox
→ Project I.S.S.—Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: ‘Construction of a chemical relational database on IN VIVO MICRONUCLEUS assay results’
Project I.S.S.—Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: ‘Construction of a chemical relational database on BIOCIDES’
→ Project: ECHA/2013/167 “Scientific Review of the QSAR Toolbox and usability improvements”: extensive review and reliability estimation of the OECD QSAR Toolbox, with particular emphasis on genotoxicity
→ Project: OC/EFSA/PRAS/2016/01/CT01 Evaluation of the applicability of existing (Q)SAR models for predicting the genotoxicity of pesticides and similarity analysis related with genotoxicity of pesticides for facilitating of grouping and read across.