Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has publicly endorsed the launch of ToxIndex, a groundbreaking agentic AI platform developed by Insilica Inc. This innovative technology promises to revolutionize toxicological risk assessment by generating fully traceable and comprehensive safety evaluations within hours, a task traditionally requiring months or even half a year of expert manual work. This launch epitomizes a pivotal advancement in chemical safety, exposomics, and regulatory science, addressing long-standing challenges and embracing the vision outlined nearly two decades ago for modern toxicology.
The field of exposomics, dedicated to understanding how environmental exposures impact human health, requires extensive data harmonization across numerous disciplines and vast timelines, tracing entire life courses rather than isolated events or exposures. Until now, integrating heterogeneous datasets and disparate research findings has been a persistent bottleneck. The emergence of ToxIndex offers an agentic system capable of autonomously navigating and consolidating these vast sources of toxicology data, greatly enhancing the capacity for integrative and comprehensive risk assessment. This paradigm shift holds promise to elevate the rigor and speed of scientific discovery in exposomics and beyond.
Historically, safety testing for chemicals has been exorbitantly expensive, consuming nearly $20 billion annually, yet only a fraction of chemicals in commerce—approximately 10%—have undergone any form of safety evaluation, and a mere 1% receives thorough scrutiny. The 2007 landmark National Research Council report, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century, envisioned supplanting traditional animal-testing approaches with computational models, in vitro assays, and mechanistic pathway analyses. Over the past two decades, the scientific community has developed extensive New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), ranging from validated quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models to high-throughput screening initiatives like ToxCast and Tox21, alongside curated adverse outcome pathways and regulatory databases.
Despite these advances, a critical integration layer that unifies the vast output and capabilities of multiple NAMs has been elusive—until now. ToxIndex, conceived and developed by Dr. Thomas Luechtefeld under Dr. Hartung’s mentorship at CAAT, addresses this deficiency directly. The platform leverages AI agents to programmatically access, synthesize, and orchestrate a comprehensive suite of toxicological data sources, enabling unified and audit-ready toxicological workflow generation. This integration spans computational predictions, in vitro bioassays, and physicochemical as well as absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) profiles to deliver fully contextualized risk evaluations.
At its core, ToxIndex incorporates three interlinked tiers of evidence. First, the in silico component draws on over 600 containerized open-source toxicology models, enhanced by a proprietary transformer architecture trained on an unprecedented dataset of 254 million human chemical activity measurements. Second, in vitro evidence is extracted from a massive knowledge graph containing upwards of 60 billion data triples, co-developed with the National Toxicology Program’s NICEATM under NSF funding. This graph integrates renowned sources such as ToxCast, Tox21, ChEMBL, and PubChem, alongside 1,200 meticulously curated datasets. Third, physicochemical and ADME properties are supplemented through expert-curated sources including REACH dossiers, EPA databases, and tools like the OECD QSAR Toolbox, rounding out the platform’s comprehensive evidence base.
A hallmark of ToxIndex is its granular provenance tracking. Each risk claim generated by the platform is fully auditable, referencing specific source datasets down to the exact database table, row, and column. This meticulous traceability not only satisfies but frequently surpasses existing regulatory requirements such as the stringent documentation standards of REACH and TSCA. By ensuring transparency and accountability, ToxIndex meets the critical need for reproducibility and regulatory compliance in toxicological assessments.
In a rigorous proof-of-concept demonstration, ToxIndex successfully produced a 47-page toxicological risk assessment for dodecanedioic acid (DDDA), encompassing 944 individual claims, within a mere three hours. This evaluation, which would traditionally demand several months of labor-intensive expert review, now emerges instantly from the platform. What is more, each claim is scored using the Klimisch system for reliability, facilitating evidence weighting and regulatory acceptability. The platform’s dynamic document crawler also continuously updates evaluations as novel scientific literature and regulatory texts are indexed globally, ensuring assessments remain current without manual intervention.
ToxIndex features adaptive capabilities that allow it to reassess chemicals dynamically as new data become available. It can prioritize evidence gaps and automatically route requests for additional experimental testing to laboratories. Furthermore, it maintains an evolving knowledge graph where every new NAM and data source is registered and integrated, creating synergistic value as each contribution enhances the utility of others. This creates a living, interconnected toxicology landscape that fosters robust, up-to-date safety profiles.
The innovation arises from a transatlantic research partnership. Dr. Hartung and Dr. Luechtefeld also collaborate within ONTOX, an ambitious €17.2 million European Horizon 2020 project focused on non-animal toxicity prediction strategies. Through ToxTrack LLC—Insilica’s sister company—ToxIndex has already been adopted by regulatory scientists in the European Union and rigorously validated against international standards. Public release plans include sharing scientific methods via arXiv, distributing code on GitHub, and broadly disseminating the underlying transformer AI technology. Engagements with NIH and OECD are underway to embed ToxIndex into global regulatory frameworks, promising its recognition as essential toxicological infrastructure.
The timing of ToxIndex’s public debut could not be more critical. Regulatory landscapes worldwide are rapidly evolving to embrace non-animal, AI-driven methodologies. Landmark policy changes such as the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 have formally eliminated animal testing mandates and explicitly endorse computational alternatives. Simultaneously, the EPA aims to eradicate mammalian testing by 2035, and Europe grapples with the massive compliance load imposed by REACH and bans on animal testing in cosmetics. This convergence of science, technology, and policy demands scalable, transparent, and high-throughput toxicological assessment tools like ToxIndex.
The surge in AI-driven drug discovery compounds this need, as thousands of novel molecular entities synthesized algorithmically require thorough safety evaluations. With only around 9,000 toxicologists serving North America and regulatory review timelines already stretched beyond legal limits for 88% of new chemicals, traditional processes are untenable. Insilica’s platform offers a practical solution to scale toxicity evaluation, avert bottlenecks, and accelerate the development of safe and effective chemical products.
Dr. Hartung’s extensive regulatory experience, including seven years as head of ECVAM at the European Commission and advisory roles with the EPA, FDA, EFSA, OECD, and Apple’s Green Chemistry Advisory Board, provides the essential credibility and trust foundation for Insilica’s collaboration with agencies and industry. He emphasizes the indispensable need for transparency and validation asserting, “95% accuracy is not good enough when human lives are at stake. Trust must be earned through institutional relationships, transparent methodology, and rigorous validation.” This ethos underscores the platform’s integration of scientific rigor, traceability, and transparency.
Both Dr. Hartung and Dr. Luechtefeld have expressed enthusiasm about ToxIndex’s potential. Dr. Hartung remarks that while the scientific groundwork—including databases, models, and policy advocacy—has long existed, ToxIndex embodies the engineering breakthrough required to integrate these components at regulatory scale, marking a transformative moment in toxicology. Dr. Luechtefeld, a CAAT alumnus, credits his mentor and states that the essence of 21st-century toxicology lies not in building isolated models but in building a system that harmonizes every resource, establishing ToxIndex as this vital systemic solution.
Insilica plans to showcase ToxIndex at the upcoming Society of Toxicology (SOT) 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, slated for March 22–25, 2026. Attendees will experience live demonstrations featuring real-time AI-driven risk assessment, automated IUCLID dossier generation for REACH compliance, and immersive interaction with the Brickyard knowledge graph. Both Dr. Hartung and Dr. Luechtefeld will be available for in-depth presentations and media engagements during the conference, inviting close scrutiny and adoption by the toxicology community.
Founded in 2017 by Dr. Luechtefeld, Insilica embodies a full-stack AI toxicology firm, blending cutting-edge machine learning, expert toxicological insight, and the world’s most extensive toxicology data infrastructure. Serving a diverse client base spanning pharmaceutical, energy, agriculture, cosmetics, and consumer product industries, Insilica operates as an official contractor to the FDA and partner in the European ONTOX consortium. Based in Rockville, Maryland, the company stands at the forefront of ushering toxicology into an era of integrative AI-driven safety evaluation.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), founded in 1981 and directed by Dr. Hartung, remains a trailblazer in advancing humane science by developing and validating non-animal methods. CAAT fosters computational toxicology innovation and serves as the U.S. hub for the Transatlantic Think Tank for Toxicology (t4), collaborating closely with CAAT-Europe. Their pioneering work in evidence-based toxicology and computational approaches has laid the foundation for platforms like ToxIndex, transforming the future landscape of chemical safety and regulatory science.
Subject of Research: AI-driven toxicological risk assessment and integration of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in chemical safety evaluation
Article Title: Transforming Toxicology: Launch of ToxIndex, an AI Platform Delivering Regulatory-Grade Chemical Risk Assessment in Hours
News Publication Date: March 14, 2026
Web References:
https://insilica.co
https://sage.toxindex.com
https://caat.jhsph.edu
Image Credits:
3rd Edition of the International Conference on Advances in 3D Cell Culture held in conjunction with the 6th Annual Summit on Biopharmaceutical Product Development | Jan 22-23, 2026 | Goa, India
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Toxicology, Environmental toxicology, Omics, Metabolomics, Computational science, Drug development, Big data, Bioactive compounds
