Technology for Growth

Nick has recently been a co-author on a paper entitled, "Global QSAR Models of Skin Sensitisers for Regulatory Purposes". The paper is part of a Special Edition of the Online Journal Chemistry Central, covering the outputs from the EU project CAESAR. The journal is open access and all the CAESAR papers can be downloaded free at: http://www.journal.chemistrycentral.com/supplements/4/S1

TfG, through Ken continue to be successful in advising clients on legal issues relating to food commodities. Ken has recently been involved in a number of cases (for which details cannot be provided here for obvious reasons). The combination of Ken's forensic thouroughness in the field and Nick's relentless chasing down of supporting information, seems to be a fruitful approach and our success rate to date is impressive. If you have need of this service please use the "Contact us" link on the left side of the page.

Computer-based toxicological assessments of chemicals are preferred to animal testing in new legislation such as REACH and regulations for pesticides and cosmetics. As well as QSAR there are other computational techniques used to predict a whole range of toxicological properties of chemicals. These include expert systems, read across and trend analysis. Some of the available software  tools for predictive toxicology are discussed in the "Predictive Toxicology" link in the Navigation pane to the left of this page. TfG have considerable experience in the use of many of these tools so for advice, training or chemical assessments please use the "Contact us" link.

In conjunction with Professor Q Chaudhry at the UK Food & Environment Research Agency, Nick has written a book chapter called "QSAR and Expert Systems as Tools in Bioremediation". The chapter will appear in the  Springer Ecophysiology Series book  "Organic xenobiotics and plants - from the cellular to the ecosystem level". More details when available.

A revised set of EU cosmetic Regulations was published in December 2009. The regulations, EC1223/2009, make a number of significant changes to the responsibilites of manufacturers and distributors of cosmetics in the EU. To read more, follow the link under cosmetics in the left hand navigation pane.

Nick & Ken have been appointed as Consulting Scientists to Brookes Bell, to support their existing high quality scientific and technical expertise.

Brookes Bell is a major independent marine consultancy based in the United Kingdom and operating worldwide. Their Master Mariners, Marine Engineers, Consulting Scientists, Naval Architect, Metallurgist and Cargo Surveyors provide expert advice to the shipping and insurance industries.

Ken will carry out expert witness work and, Nick will provide technical information research, supplementing the five existing Scientist Partners, Fuel Chemist Partner and Metallurgist.

For more information use the "Contact Us" navigation link.

The culimination of the EU and DEFRA funded project CAESAR is a series of  predictive models for estimating 5 common toxicological endpoints: bioconcentration factor, skin sensitisation, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and developmental toxicity. The models are freely available from the project website, (http://www.caesar-project.eu/software/index.htm), via a small JAVA based front end download.

Press the link below to see the steps in the process:

On the 1st April 2009 the Health and Safety Executive, (HSE) announced the creation of the Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD).  The new Directorate brings together  HSE 's responsibilities for pesticides, biocides, detergents, and industrial chemicals (REACH, Classification, Labelling and other legislation). 

The CAESAR project to develop QSAR models for regulatory use is in its write-up phase. The final project workshop was held in Milan on the 10th and 11th March 2009. The presentations from the workshop can be downloaded from: http://www.caesar-project.eu/workshop/info.htm